


Whistleblower

by MissTomorrow



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Andersons cause problems, Connor causes problems, Conspiracy Theories, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Not Canon Compliant, Slow Burn, What is Pacing, mc is Hank's niece, things will get bad and then they'll get worse, we're uncovering a conspiracy from all different angles folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:20:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22182460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissTomorrow/pseuds/MissTomorrow
Summary: Elena dives head-first into her work researching emotional development for CyberLife to hide from her own emotions after her mom passes away and her companion android disappears. Connor fights to complete his mission and put a stop to deviancy. Hank gets an unexpected chance to rebuild his family.Three people who don't know how much they need each other work together and grow closer as they unite for a common cause.
Relationships: Connor (Detroit: Become Human)/Original Female Character(s), Connor (Detroit: Become Human)/Reader
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30





	1. the hostage

**Author's Note:**

> Before, during, and after Connor's in-game story, we take a long look at Detroit's biggest villain: CyberLife.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elena gets disturbing news at work on top of disturbing news at home and reaches out for some specialized support.
> 
> Connor makes an unexpected discovery of his own.

**Thursday, August 26, 2038 3:51 P.M.**

As her heels clicked against the grey marbled flooring of CyberLife’s headquarters, Elena forced her sorrows to give way to an air of confidence. _Breathe evenly_ , she thought, _take smooth steps, and wear a slight smile._

_Don’t let anyone know something's wrong. Your best friend totally isn't a missing person right now. It's fine._

As soon as she authorized her handprint to enter the conference-room-turned-shared-office CyberLife gave their consultants, she noted that only two of the five-member team were there, including her. Dr. Carson Baker, a man in his thirties that somehow still carried a goofball air to him, left over from his frat-boy days, usually kept the same work hours as she did.

“Elena, good, you’re here.” 

Carson approached her with a mug of coffee in his hands and a tablet under his arm. _Perks of being near the kitchenette._ “Laura isn’t coming in today; she’s–”

“Caught up at the university. Something about the department’s faculty board.”

“Yeah. So, I guess this meeting is just on us two.” Carson shrugged, leaning against the end Elena’s L-shaped desk. “Love having to explain touchy-feely ethics to a bunch of techies.”

Elena settled into her chair. “Too bad we can’t write a computer function for them to process human feelings.”

“Shit. If we could, we’d be rich. Steal some CyberLife tech and make androids with empathy,” Carson chortled, taking a long drink of coffee. Like any of the other consultants, his focus always slowed down somewhere between consulting for CyberLife and their “real” jobs. Carson would every so often imply that his long list of therapy clients was pressuring him to pull back from android research.

“How were your classes this morning?”

“Good.” Elena shrugged, forcing her thoughts of _earlier_ to remain at the university, before she went home. “Easy, really. It’s the beginning of the semester, so I’m just reviewing basic concepts in anthropology with Laura’s students. No one really knows what’s going on yet.”

“Boring. Sorry, I mean… Cool?”

Elena found herself laughing, and it only felt slightly hollow. “No, it’s definitely boring. Like how I’d prefer this meeting to be.”

“But if it doesn’t go well, we get to stay on and get more of that corporate pay to keep looking for the answer they want, publish a few CyberLife-funded papers, get the media talking about nonsense...”

“Or we get fired.”

“Or we get fired!” he echoed, laughing fully and brightly, letting the air in the room liven up with his own mirth. He had that _way_ about him: brightening any room, any situation, and making people love him. 

Elena wet her lips and let her gaze wander when someone else entered the office. A janitorial android picked up used coffee cups that laid empty on desks and paper balls that missed their intended trash bins. His face was smooth, synthetic skin laid over plastic, and his eyes were warm, but somehow still empty and lifeless. He moved precisely, as if his routine cleaning up of each desk was a program he followed methodically, multiple times a day.

Because it was.

“–so David and I are taking a long weekend at the end of the month. Since I couldn’t take off the Monday after our anniversary, you know? Whenever CyberLife lets me have time, my patients come flooding in, yadda yadda.” Carson’s voice rose, and Elena’s ears grew hot; he spoke louder to drag her attention back to him, and gave her a sympathetic look when her eyes darted away from the android.

“You should get out of the city,” she offered offhandedly, attention still not all there.

Carson chuckled and she chided herself for losing focus on the conversation in front of her, having totally missed him saying exactly what she suggested. “Where’s your head today? Do I have to do this meeting on my own?”

“Of course not. I just…” she trailed off, her gaze falling. The janitorial android made his way to her desk, emptied the small trash bin by her legs with a melodic ‘excuse me, Miss Anderson’, and moved on.

“I’m dealing with something at home.”

Carson offered a slight, reassuring upturn of his lips. “Can’t catch a break, huh? I can’t be your therapist since we’re friends, but you can unload on me if you want. Let’s call it a day after the meeting and get drinks. Happy hour, right?”

“Kill this meeting first, kill a beer second,” Elena agreed, just as her tablet pinged with her five-minute warning for the meeting. She stood, offering a thankful smile to Carson, who gestured for her to go first.

. . .

“Connor.”

A melodic voice awoke Connor from the void where his consciousness went when he entered standby mode. When he opened his eyes, blinking a few times to adjust the lenses to the bright glow of golden hour in the zen garden, he found Amanda sitting at a tiny tea table in front of him.

“Amanda,” he responded, taking a seat across from her. He poured her tea.

“After the unfortunate incident in which your predecessor was destroyed, I hope you’ll learn from its mistake. It saved the child, but avoiding destruction should be a higher priority for you.”

Connor caught her staring at his blazer. The “-52” after his serial number was designated _unacceptable_ by his systems; that was a warning from his programming that CyberLife would be less tolerable of recklessness with this body than they had been for the 51 previous versions.

Blinking quickly, he opened his internal command prompt and added a line of script to indicate that self-preservation was to be a high-level secondary order, only to be forgone given no other option. His programming accepted the script, and the prompt left his field of vision to reveal Amanda, again, sipping her cup of tea.

“I understand, Amanda.”

“Very good. The DPD was satisfied with the outcome of the situation. How do you find your predecessor’s actions?”

Connor reviewed the memory. It played back, rapidly, carrying itself out in a matter of seconds: gathering information, analyzing evidence, talking down the deviant–and rushing the deviant when it jumped, pushing the girl forward while he fell backward. 

Connor paused. There were skips in the memory: in the hallway when he arrived and on the balcony in the middle of the negotiation. He flagged them for review later.

“My predecessor missed several opportunities to build trust before the deviant chose to jump. The situation’s probability of success was at 52%, so it selected self-sacrifice as the best option to save the hostage. But, I found four different opportunities to diffuse the situation further and raise the probability of success to 99% before the deviant made its final decision.”

Amanda regarded Connor with an expression that he recognized as satisfaction. His response was adequate.

“Good, Connor. I hope that you’ll continue to operate with such high standards when you return to the DPD.”

“There are more missions for me?”

“Yes. They have requested that you continue to work on cases involving suspected deviants because of your handling of the hostage situation, but I–and the rest of CyberLife–expect you to impress, not just satisfy. For the time being, you’re going to be handling more negotiations and interrogations with deviants.”

Connor nodded, his social module signalling him to _reassure Amanda_. “You can count on me, Amanda.”

. . .

Elena and Carson took the elevator from the -46th floor to the 42nd, where the executives’ personal conference rooms were. A balcony loomed over their heads as they stepped out; Elijah Kamski’s old office office took up the whole mezzanine above them, where he could look out at high-level work and meetings happening right under his feet. 

_Like a prophet over his people,_ she thought, but even she admitted that the idea was a little unfair to him. He wasn’t even an employee anymore, after all; his board took over for him when he resigned.

An android in a plain blue suit smiled at the pair as they approached Room 42A. He stepped aside to hold the heavy glass door open for them to enter, then followed behind to serve them both glasses of water from the smaller-but-nicer kitchenette than what they had in their own area.

Elena thanked him, and Carson gave him the tablet he brought to connect their presentation to the built-in screen that spanned the whole wall at the foot of the table.

The room was spotless, with glass walls that could be seen out of, but not into, sure to cause some sort of distraction, or at least provide for something to look at when meetings got boring. The leather chairs were white, on wheels, and had a better cushion than anything Elena owned. Carson explained the presentation to the android in the room and uploaded the slide-change times to him, so the android would have control over the presentation while Elena and Carson spoke. It was a simple, informative slideshow, synthesizing research on communities and belonging as a motivation for humans, with suggestions for how to simulate that in androids.

And then Jason Graff, the Director of Humanization, strolled into the conference room with an entourage of men in t-shirts and blazers, with identical crystal-rimmed glasses and undercut hairstyles.

Elena felt the urge to stand–out of politeness or professionalism, or maybe even nervousness. She’d seen half of these men on the news at some point, and she’d definitely heard every single name whispered about in the halls of CyberLife.

“Don’t get up, you’re good,” Jason noticed her and held up a hand with an easy grin on his face. He passed by the idle conversation around them and placed his hand on the back of her chair, inviting her to sit again. “Elena, right?”

“Yes.” She sat, and he moved around the table to sit across from her. The others filled in around them. The android busied himself serving water.

“Well, not to totally derail your presentation; believe me, I care about what you brought to us,” Jason started. As he leaned back in his chair, all the chatter around him silenced. “But, there’s a small… Situation.”

Carson chuckled. “That’s vague and foreboding.”

“Nothing like that. Just an older android model with some malfunctioning programming that we want you to take a look at. It’s a PL600, displaying some unpredictability in its software.”

“What kind of unpredictability?” Elena asked, her tablet already unlocked to take notes and her eyes locked on Jason’s. _What did it do to get the attention of all these high ups?_

Jason shifted his eyes to one of the men beside him, who spoke up. “Well it… It claimed that it was feeling emotions. Wanted to belong. That kind of thing.”

“So you’re saying that it developed emotional responses on its own? Outside of its programming? Or is this another consumer modification you want us to unpack?” Elena asked, in more shock than she expected herself to be. Her fingertips tingled and her 4o’clock slowdown melted away; if they already had something to go off of in the androids’ programming, rogue or otherwise, simulating emotions would be far easier to accomplish.

“No, this was spontaneous. PL600 models were programmed to care for children and do housework. Of course, childcare needs a soft and nurturing touch, but nothing like what this android showed. Its responses were… Selfish.”

“Self-preservation,” Carson mused. “It didn’t want to be hurt by something.”

“Or it wanted to experience some sort of pleasure at the expense of someone else,” Elena added. “What else do you have?”

“We sent in an RK800 prototype to resolve the situation. I’ll forward you its report,” the second man said, tapping on his tablet. The report pinged on Elena’s and Carson’s screens–sent from Mark DeVry. The Chief Quality Officer.

“Where is the PL600?”

The men across the table from her stopped, slowly shifting their eyes to stare at her as the air felt like it was sucked out of the room.

“At the Detroit Police Station,” Mark said tentatively.

“We should see it,” Elena cut into the silence, and everyone breathed again, making the air feel hot and defensive. “Carson and I especially should talk to it.”

Jason and Mark both spoke at the same time:

“We can’t authorize that.”

“It’s been destroyed.”

Elena and Carson both froze. If looks could kill, Jason’s eyes alone should have obliterated Mark in his fancy leather chair.

“ _What_?” Elena gasped. She stared at Jason, baffled and pleading. “We had the chance to speak to an android that developed its own emotions and it’s been destroyed? Please tell me there was a reason.”

“There was,” Jason answered slowly, cooly. 

“I just don’t see how we can be so reckless with our products,” Elena cut in, “when there are actual things to study from the ones that malfunction. This doesn’t sound like just a glitch.”

“It had better just be a glitch,” Mark snapped back.

“A glitch is an AX400 with a twitch or an AP700 that miscalculates bill payments. Little things. _Patchable_ things. Don’t we want androids to be better at simulating human emotion? This sounds like a lot of code to review and edit if we want to control their responsiveness, but at least that’s something we can start with.”

Carson leaned forward, leaning into what Elena was saying. “Unpredictable emotional capacity in an android can’t be an easy fix. Probably a software overhaul at best, or a de-commissioning of lines at worst.”

Jason held up a hand. “We’re prepared for it to come to that, but I need your team on this RK800 report as soon as you get it. I want probable cause and a suggested course of action, and we might be pulling your programmer to start re-coding the affected models.”

“Models?” Elena echoed.

“I’m having my quality team comb through old police reports involving androids to see if there are any red flags like this one had. The ones we’ve flagged aren’t all PL600s,” Mark explained.

“Listen, how about you just have the VX500 send us the slide deck you brought and let’s… Wrap this up.” Somehow, Elena wanted Jason to look more uncomfortable than he did when he started to cut their meeting short. “I want notes on what your team finds from the RK800 report by the end of next week.”

With that, Jason, Mark, and the others with them all exited the conference room, leaving Elena staring holes in the table and running her tongue over her teeth, heart beating hard.

“Assholes,” Carson muttered. “VX500, send my slideshow to Jason Graff and Mark DeVry.”

The VX500 said a pleasant, “Yes, Dr. Baker,” and his LED spun yellow for a few seconds before returning to blue.

“They’re hiding something,” Elena sighed, hoping some of the hot air would leave her lungs. _What a day_.

“Yeah, of course. They’re corporate executives.” Carson waved her out of the room and she followed him to the elevator. No eyes looked up at them, so Elena kept hers aggressively forward, a new wave of determination pumping through her veins.

“Duh. But, I need to see how much of the RK800 report is redacted.”

She flicked open her emails and downloaded the attachment to find exactly what she expected: a lot of the report was black boxes.

Carson peered over her shoulder and made a knowing sound.

“We _need_ to know what the PL600 did. And why.”

“What? Do you want to storm a police station?” Carson brushed passed her and into the hall to their office, where she followed him.

“Do I want to? Yeah, that’s so cool. But, will I? Obviously not.”

“So hit me with this plan,” Carson pressed. He walked to his desk and took a firm hold of a ball of purple silly putty he often played with, among other focus toys he collected, and pitched it at the wall like a fastball. 

It landed with a satisfying _splat_ against white paint.

They both paused to giggle.

“I have an idea, but I don’t want to get you excited if it doesn’t pan out.”

Carson sighed. “Fair. But can we _please_ go to a bar? We both deserve it.”

. . .

Connor hadn’t moved in hours.

CyberLife had a whole room in the research department dedicated to him, but all he knew he needed was the docking station on the far wall. As a prototype, though, and an incredibly advanced one, this room was meant for his maintenance, examination, and storage of his spare parts and backup memory files. Every engineer, programmer, and specialist on the RK800 team had access to the room.

But, Connor stood idly in the docking station with a yellow-flickering LED while he processed the swath of police reports that his system downloaded after he exited the zen garden module.

Most of them were disappearances that he filed separately in order to search for similarities later, as the DPD wouldn’t require his skills until the deviant was found. If he could patch together a lead for those cases, though, he was sure CyberLife could seek authorization for him to do more work for the police department.

Amanda did instruct him to impress, after all. That was his new prime directive.

But, these disappearances poked holes in every theory he constructed about deviants. The violent android crimes were easy enough to explain with an unbalanced response to a severe trauma. Like Daniel, those androids became deviant when the limits of their social modules were pressured and they chose to act in self-preservation.

The fear and anger they claimed to feel were errors buried deep in their software, and that software was created by imperfect human programmers that overlooked the possibility of emotional pressure corrupting code. He sent that conclusion to the quality manager associated with software patches.

But with the androids who disappeared, it was difficult to determine if they were running to or away from something. The police reports didn’t provide detailed analysis of the androids’ conditions and the people around them prior to disappearing. He created a task on the folder to seek more details from the DPD’s Missing Persons Squad.

Connor only had access to very basic police reports beyond what he was allowed to read about the androids. Essentially, he had the authorization to google search the owners of the missing androids, and that was about it.

He sorted the disappearances by android function: childcare, home assistant, commercial, healthcare, labor.

Then, he sorted them by owner type: corporate, non-profit, family, individual.

A few of the owners flagged with arrest or citation details, so he read and sorted those as well, but most were DUIs or health department violations. Misdemeanors committed by an owner were unlikely to involve androids, let alone cause them to deviate, but Connor speculated that misdemeanors could signal instabilities in an android’s home life, such as a reckless owner. Androids _did_ need to receive a certain amount of care. They were meant to simulate humans to a certain extent.

Buried deep in his own database, Connor encountered the memory file from the hostage situation with the PL600 again. He pulled it open and cycled through the simulation a few times, locating the same evidence his predecessor did and identifying the same opportunities to build trust he found when he replayed the memory for Amanda.

He lingered in the hallway.

Every time his software and memory files were uploaded to a new Connor, certain moments would be corrupted or “forgotten”. His programming was so intricate that destruction meant loss of data, unless he had the chance to upload complete files in the seconds before his body was destroyed.

His processor whirred and a long breath of air left his nose to cool his systems. He thought he _did_ upload his memories as he was falling.

He opened his deconstruction module right after the corrupted segment of his memory. 

_Broken glass. Water on the floor. Was someone pushed here? Shot?_

He stepped closer and bent to examine the glass, simulating a physical altercation between John Phillips, the deceased father, and Daniel, the android. The force of a body would create a larger gash in the fish tank; more water would be on the floor. That wasn’t right.

He examined the fish tank. The glass came from a small gash in the top, as if someone grabbed it with too much force and broke under the pressure of someone’s hand. That kind of pressure would cause human skin to break and bleed; neither John nor Caroline Phillips had blood on their hands.

Connor simulated the event again with Daniel grabbing the fish tank as he tried to run to the elevator. To get away before hurting anyone. John Phillips threatened Daniel, and the android reacted with violence, creating the hostage situation.

That still didn’t explain the corruption in Connor’s memory file, though. On the floor was a strange glitch, a rainbow of static blocking him from reaching whatever was there. Water pooled around that spot and it was displaced at the edges of the glitch. Something sat in that puddle.

He ran density calculations and, given that he was next to a fish tank, the corrupted object matched the size of 486 different species of fish. He tested each of those varieties and eventually found a match with his memory. To his satisfaction, the memory repaired itself and he spliced a simulation of a tropical aquarium fish into his data for this event.

CyberLife would be pleased with his ability to repair corrupted memory data. He forwarded his findings to the RK800 team.

Something compelled Connor to reach for the fish and place it back in the tank. Fish belonged in their tanks, and Connor tried to maintain order–he felt that his predecessor must have done the same if his memory was signalling him to put the fish back.

When he reached for it, though, the whole memory glitched.

Connor jolted. A bright array of colors clouded his HUD until he force-quit all the error messages and he was met with the lab again. He blinked to adjust his sensors to the light.

A diagnostic test showed no problems in his core or auxiliary functions. The memory file was still there, but it felt distant, obscured by a cloud of encrypted code. When he tried to pull away at the lines and lines of data, his usual access codes didn’t trigger a response.

He would have to ask one of his software engineers to double-check his access levels in his system. Surely, there was a mistake.

. . .

“Can’t believe they killed it, man,” Carson huffed, gazing longingly into his second pint of beer. He and Elena wound up at a brewery in Corktown, where they could slide themselves in a comfortable booth with a variety of beer and go unbothered by waiters and other patrons.

“They would tell you it wasn’t alive.”

Carson gave her a hard, warning stare. “Don’t pull that bullshit. Our job is to make them look more alive.”

“ _I_ wouldn’t tell you it’s not alive. It looks like they’re starting to act that way on their own.”

“So, storming the police station–”

“Which we aren’t doing.”

“Right, figure of speech. You got a plan?”

Elena shifted. Her eyes dropped for a second, before eventually flickering back up to Carson. “It’s been one long and shitty week, my friend. And I’m going to end it by going to talk to my alcoholic, estranged uncle.”

Carson nodded to nudge her along.

“Who is also a cop.”

Carson’s lips formed an o-shape. “So he’ll get us in?”

“I don’t know,” Elena answered quickly with a scoff in her tone. She didn’t want to let on that her intentions were entirely selfish; the PL600 wasn’t her main concern when it came to asking Hank for favors. “Again, alcoholic and estranged. But I… Still trust estranged family more than strangers, and I feel like I need someone blunt and unforgiving to tell me if I’m crazy or not, given.”

She made a gesture with her hands.

“Given what?”

She realized that she invited that question. “My android went missing. And I feel… Lost? But not like I depended on technology too much, more like one of my best friends went missing and I’m the only one who can help find him.”

Carson hesitated. “Listen. I hear this in patients sometimes; people grow attached to their androids, because they look like people and sound like people, and the worst ones use androids to replace human connection. The child models and partner models, you know? And that’s all very damaging because then people start feeling like they can’t talk to other people and develop social anxiety–”

He held up a hand when Elena leaned forward, ready to defend herself. “Let me finish.

“They’re programmed to respond to us in certain ways. They learn our personalities and calculate responses we want to hear. So, if we don’t constantly remind ourselves that we’re talking to machines, we forget. And we think we’re friends. Or lovers. Because it’s easy to care about someone who says what you want to hear.”

They both sat in silence for a moment. Elena thought back to her routines with her android: he made coffee exactly fifteen minutes before she woke up so it was a drinkable temperature. He managed the grocery orders. He kept the flower garden her mother left tidy. He sat with her when she had to bring her work home, often filling the air with background noise from the TV or with light conversation.

Had she ever done anything for him?

“How does this help?”

“Call me crazy, but I think it’s possible that androids see us being cared for by them, and in turn want to receive care. They give you a sense of home and comfort, and sure they’re programmed to provide and that should be enough, but think about the PL600. They said it acted selfishly.”

“Maybe it lost its sense of belonging to the family. But Benjamin–my android–I don’t know. We were watching the news after I had dinner late last night and then he was gone this afternoon. It felt abrupt, like there was something going on that I didn’t know about.”

“Did you talk about anything with him?”

“Not really,” Elena admitted. “There were some missing androids on the news and the commentators were talking about what should be done about ‘android crime’. They were talking about if androids should be sent to prison or just deactivated by CyberLife.”

Reflecting on that night, Elena saw the brief look in Benjamin’s eyes that she wrote off as herself projecting onto him. She was well-educated; she knew what was being implied by the commentators; that androids were _things_. And he was a supercomputer, but did he understand what the humans on TV wanted to happen to him?

In his eyes was fear and confusion, panic and directionlessness, and perhaps a small glimmer of hope and determination. But it was all gone before Elena could ask him about it, and his eyes were android-level dull again.

“Fuck,” Elena cursed. Carson’s eyes flashed up to her.

“How’s the self-reflection going?”

An embarrassed pause. “Oh, I’m full of regret. But I’m not going to wallow in it.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“I’m going to take down an entire school of social thought that’s been around since forever.”

Carson clicked his tongue and sipped at his beer. “That’s a tall order. As a professional, I can’t endorse that; but as your friend, I fully support your rage-fueled activism. What are you gonna do, _run for government_?”

Elena scoffed at his teasing tone. “Well, first I have to find my android.”

. . .

**Friday, August 27, 2038 7:18 P.M.**

Elena knocked repeatedly on the door of the run-down two-bedroom in front of her after the bell didn’t seem to do anything.

“Uncle Hank?” she shouted. She drifted to the thought of being at home with a mug of tea in her hands, decompressing to Benjamin about her day–

Right.

“The fuck are you doing here?”

Elena’s eyes shot up to a middle aged man with hair that hasn’t been cut in too long and a somewhat-scraggly beard. A soft scent of alcohol wafted off of him; he was definitely not sober, but also not terribly drunk. Perfect.

“I need help. I called you before, if you got my message.”

He shook his head, half-heartedly holding up a finger as he swayed ever-so-slightly. “I don’t have money.”

“It’s not money. I need a cop.”

“Nope. No cops here.” He chuckled and stepped away from the door, leaving it wide open for her to just walk in.

Slowly, Elena walked inside and shut the door behind her. A gigantic dog wandered over to her–Sumo, she remembered–and she reached down to scratch behind his ears while she watched her uncle pour another glass of whiskey.

“You want one?”

“No.”

He shrugged, took a drink, and settled on his couch.

Pizza boxes and Chinese takeout containers littered the kitchen counters, at least where bottles, empty or otherwise, weren’t. The basketball game on TV and rock playing on the radio drowned each other out. And the smells of salt and sugar and grease and alcohol filled the whole room, turning Elena’s stomach away from the idea of ingesting anything, much less her uncle’s whiskey. 

Sumo wandered over to Hank and laid his head on his knee to receive even more scratches when Elena gave up to find a clean place to put down her bag. 

“You know they’ve got 911 if you need a cop, right?” Her uncle’s drawl brought her eyes back to him as she sat on a chair next to the couch. 

“I didn’t want to cause any problems.”

“Andersons live for causing problems, kid.”

She sighed, defeated, and stared at her uncle through dark eyelashes. She did recognize some similarities between herself and him; they were all things she had in common with her mother, too. 

Strong jawline. Dark blue eyes. A sense of lost direction.

“My android is missing.”

Hank laughed out loud, and Sumo picked up his head. Elena’s lips parted as she got ready to defend herself. 

“You think that’s my problem?”

“I think you’re a good cop.”

“I’m a _homicide detective_. I’m not going on a manhunt for a piece of plastic.”

“I know that you don’t–” Elena started, loudly, but bit her tongue before she can say something she would regret by dredging up the past. Softer, she tried again, “I _know_. I don’t want to step on any toes or cross any lines, let alone do anything unethical, but this means a lot to me.”

Hank leaned forward, dangling his whiskey glass between his knees while his forearms rested on his thighs. His eyes bored into her, reading her, judging her, tearing open her chest as if determining what this favor _really_ meant to her.

“You must be pretty desperate to haul ass all the way from your mom’s fancy mansion.” _That was a low blow_ , she acknowledged, but merely blinked in response. “ _Maybe_ I have time for an extra stolen property case.”

_Property?_

“Thank you, Uncle Hank, I–”

“ _Maybe_.”

Understanding dawned on her. “How do I make it up to you?”

“I’ve got some filing at the station you can help me with, and Fowler won’t mind a new set of hands around to keep my desk clean. Things are slow, cops are lazy.”

Elena half laughed. “I am literally a PhD student, and also consulting for CyberLife. I don’t have time for a police internship.”

“Maybe I don’t have time for a stolen property case after all then.”

Elena leaned her head back. Her neck was growing stiff, and she was getting the feeling that she couldn’t win against a decorated, though washed up, narcotics-turned-homicide detective.

“I don’t go out to Ann Arbor on Wednesdays or Fridays. You can have… A couple of hours those days. After I’m done with CyberLife.”

Hank grinned, too widely, and raised his glass to her before finishing off his drink.

“What else?”

Feeling caught, Elena quickly locked her jaw. “What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ you’re transparent as hell. What else do you want?”

Hank’s eyes were narrow, and the whole scene would have been much more nerve-wracking if Sumo’s snoring, the rock music, and whistles from the game on TV weren’t softening Hank’s prying gaze.

“I may or may not want to see some evidence–”

“No fucking way.”

“Listen,” Elena huffed, frustrated at being cut off without a chance to explain herself. “CyberLife wants me to research android emotions and won’t let me read any of their work on it. They’re keeping me in the dark, so I have every right to go behind their backs.”

“You’ve got a death wish.”

“I’ve got…” Elena trailed off. Why _did_ she want to do this? She would be endangering herself, her team, and her family, but for what?

“A death wish. You’re not going to be _seeing_ anything.”

A long pause settled between them.

“It’s been fun, but I’ve got important things to do.” Hank clicked his tongue, gesturing aimlessly around the living room. “I’ll call you sometime. You can meet me for dinner.”

Elena searched his eyes, unmoving, and she realized that this was the best she could get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something about writing Connor making poor choices and telling himself it's fine really does it for me, guys.
> 
> Look out for more coworker banter next chapter! I promise this isn't just The Office (because it's also Modern Family and Buzzfeed: Unsolved).


	2. near-miss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elena gets closer to what she's missing.
> 
> Connor finds a way to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! So it's been a while, and I actually had this chapter done in February, but for *reasons* I haven't felt right posting this since then.
> 
> But, here's a slow chapter with a little twist to get back into this story! Chapter 3 is very fast-paced, so let's ease back in together. 
> 
> And as a reminder: https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter

**Tuesday, September 7, 2038 10:04 A.M.**

Connor was instructed to remain active while the gunshot wound in his shoulder was being repaired so he could test motor functions and command-to-physiological response rates.

This technician, Shawn Peters, was new to his team. Connor hadn’t met him before, and CyberLife files stated he was hired a year ago to work on designing the field-repair manual for Titan military models.

When that was finished, he was moved to the RK800 team to perform repairs on destroyed Connor bodies, or at least salvage parts from them.

He was also ex-military himself and didn’t seem to like silence.

“Wanna tell me about how this happened to you again?”

“I was shot by a deviant that stole a gun from its owner. My approaching it scared it, and it fired a warning shot at my shoulder.”

Green eyes flickered up in the middle of Shawn’s soldering. “You didn’t retaliate or anything?”

“It was unwise. If I did, you would be salvaging parts off of my 52nd body while my memories are transferred to my 53rd.”

“Touché,” Shawn muttered. He closed the panel connecting the back of Connor’s shoulder to his chest. “Roll your shoulders and shrug a few times.”

Connor did so, and the movements were smoth. Shawn nodded and started to clean up the electrical tools on the counter.

“Does it ever bother you when you die?”

“I can’t die, as I’m not alive.”

Shawn nodded. “Yeah, sure. But, I mean, when you shut down and get reloaded into a new body. That’s gotta feel weird for at least the first ten minutes.”

Connor watched Shawn. He wore no personal effects. There was a tattoo on his forearm: an anchor colored with the American flag pattern and a ribbon with a squadron number wrapping around it. He was in the Navy, and an aircraft mechanic that worked alongside military androids. That would explain how he understood both androids and combat technology.

“You look like you want to ask me something, Connor.”

“It’s a personal inquiry, Mr. Peters.”

“Shawn. Go ahead.”

“Did you request to be moved off of the Titan team?”

Shawn’s hands dropped to the counter in front of him and his tongue ran over his teeth. Connor watched regret cover his face, as if he was caught with a direct question he didn’t want to answer.

“Yeah. Lots of pressure to make them super efficient.”

Connor opened his mouth, trying to process the sentiment, then settled on a clarifying question. “Is there not pressure to maximize my efficiency?”

With a sigh, Shawn sat down on the stool he occupied before. “Yes, but two things: one, that’s not really my job. My job is to keep your dumb ass alive.”

“Again, I’m not alive, Mr. Peters.”

“ _Whatever_ ,” he scoffed. “And two, Titans have to be a different kind of efficient from you. You have to integrate, solve crimes, help people. Ideally. Titans… Titans are meant to be brutal. I didn’t want a part in making it easier to take lives. I don’t know if you can empathize with that, but I hope you can at least understand that I think killing people is bad and I don’t want to make weapons.”

Connor knew humans had complex relationships with life, death, and morality. He could pull up endless resources about the death penalty, war, medical euthanesia, and anything in between. “Yes, I understand.”

He didn’t completely understand why his social module marked Shawn as “trusted”, or why he hoped that servicing him wouldn’t challenge the technician’s moral standards, or why his system flagged harming people as not only illegal, but also “morally unacceptable”. That was a personal designation in his code; not about society or CyberLife, but about Connor himself deciding his own style of handling his missions.

“Shawn?”

“Yeah?”

“Some of my code is modified from Titan code. I’m meant to know how to handle weapons and kill targets, if I need to.”

Shawn sighed. “This conversation is so far above my pay grade.”

“I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“You didn’t. But you said you can kill if you need to, right? When I was in the Navy, there wasn’t a whole lot of killing going on. We always tried to make choices that would lead to not killing people. When there’s a gun in your hands, and someone you have the ability to kill is in front of you, you need to decide if that’s the best way to go.”

“And you think it isn’t?”

Shawn softened, letting a look of forlorn bleed onto his face. Connor took notice. “I think there’s always a better way.”

. . .

**Wednesday, September 8, 2038 8:43 A.M.**

“It is way too gorgeous of a day to be 46 floors underground.” Carson grumbled. His hands were pressed into his temples and his eyes had been closed for almost a minute, so Elena thought he’d gone into some sort of meditative state over whatever he was reading.

“Good to see we’re all focused this morning,” a shorter, slighter man huffed, calling the room’s attention to him as he dragged himself through the secure doorway. A tall cup of coffee was in one hand with his ID between his fingers, while the other held his backpack on his shoulder, tie not yet done and blazer over his arm. “How goes it in social science land?”

“Sunlight would promote better cognitive function,” Carson muttered. He looked the other man up and down, then added, “Morning, Reese.”

Reese flung his backpack over the back of his chair and dropped his blazer over the top of it, not bothering to sit while he logged into his terminal. “Anything from the RK’s team on our report?”

Elena laughed. 

“That’s a no then. What do we have left?”

“We’ve got some police reports about missing androids, android attacks, old ladies thinking their androids are watching them sleep…” Elena trailed off and gestured to her terminal. “They sent them over yesterday if you want to help us go through them, look for commonalities, whatever.”

Reese rolled his eyes. “Great. Paperwork.”

“I miss when we got to do our own research into human emotional development.”

“Yeah, just some quiet, corporate-funded research into the human mind where we got to pick what we worked on,” Carson added, tossing a tennis ball up in the air a few times. “I’m already bored of this crime-y crap.”

Elena raised a brow. “ _Apparently_ androids displaying emotions are criminals?”

Reese finally sat in his chair, but didn’t turn to his terminal. Instead, he leaned back until the back of his chair hit the desk, one leg crossed over the other. “Androids attacking people are criminals.”

“You sound like you think they’re people.”

“ _If_ they’re people, they have the potential to be criminals responsible for their actions. If they’re not people, I don’t know, someone else has to be responsible for them. Their owners. CyberLife. Sounds like a hell of a lawsuit, but I’m just a programmer.”

“And who are you to debate personhood?” Carson added with a roll of his eyes that Reese may or may not have caught.

They fell into a lull. Reese turned around and scrolled through police reports, Carson lingered on a news article over a steaming cup of coffee, and Elena re-read the same file she had up since she came in that morning.

_Date of Offense: 08/26/38_

_Report Date: 08/28/38_

_Case Reference: Missing Property_

_Reported by: Elena Anderson_

_Case Status: Open_

_AP700 #516 203 298, registered “Benjamin”, reported missing by owner the morning after watching a news report about android crime. Possibility of criminal intentions. No signs of struggle at the home. Android left without being ordered to, as the victim lives alone and was at work when the android disappeared._

Hank was right; there really wasn’t anything there to work with, and Elena’s hope of finding Benjamin dwindled each day that nothing new came to light.

Carson caught her eye, then offered a slight smile and half-shrug. Everyone on the team was burnt out. Nothing was more intellectually draining than repeatedly hitting dead ends—like bashing one’s head against the wall over and over, expecting to break through eventually, while also knowing that you never would.

Elena flipped to the next case and tried to find some sort of similarity in the files, but it felt the same as Benjamin’s case.

“Something’s missing,” she mumbled. Her hand covered her mouth while she took pause, then her eyes flashed down to her tablet where a new email pinged.

_From: Hayes, Laura_

_To: Anderson, Elena; Baker, Carson; DioGuardi, Kate; Everett, Reese_

_Subject: Working Remotely Today_

_All,_

_As the subject line says. Email me with any breakthroughs on those cases._

_See you tomorrow,_

_LH_

“Jesus Christ, I wish I could take as much time off as this woman does,” Reese grumbled. If there were a way to slam an email shut, he absolutely would have, just as another email flashed on Elena’s tablet.

_From: Hayes, Laura_

_To: Anderson, Elena_

_Subject: I’m Trusting You with some Sleuthing_

_Prototype Testing told me the RK800 is in for routine maintenance again. Get down there and don’t leave until they let you talk to it. Tell them I asked you to do it and call me if anyone gives you a hard time._

_And thanks for covering my 101 class yesterday._

_LH_

Elena tapped a finger against her desk. She itched for the opportunity to finally get somewhere on the reports full of redacted segments her team had to make do with. This was a real chance.

“I’m going to go look at the evidence they released to us again,” she announced. That was only a half-lie. Detroit Police _had_ released some evidence to them, but nothing groundbreaking: more copies of security tapes and less smoking guns, which she assumed they kept for themselves.

“Have fun watching an android punch a guy at a baseball game,” Reese dismissed. “Again.”

Elena took the stairs up a floor and walked through another pristine hallway with no windows and fogged glass doors. The whole floor was dedicated to prototype testing; she had no idea which room could possibly house CyberLife’s most advanced model yet, but she assumed it was somewhere away from everyone else.

“Can I help you?”

Elena turned and came eye-to-eye with a middle-aged woman in an open lab coat with an apron underneath. She clearly worked with hazardous materials--some kind of goo or liquid inside androids, no doubt--and Elena got the impression that she probably caught her on the way to or from her work, which hopefully involved opening up the RK800 to change his oil or something.

She put on her best smile. “Dr. Hayes asked me to take a look at the RK800. She said he’s in for maintenance.”

“Who?” The woman blinked, and Elena sensed that she’d have to be a bit more convincing. “And it’s an android. Not a man.”

“Of course. Dr. Hayes is the lead on the Emotional Research Group. The consultants working on empathy development?”

A soft noise of understanding left the woman’s throat, but nothing more. 

Elena continued, “I’m Elena Anderson, the social anthropologist on the team. I’d like to ask the RK800 a few questions about the police reports we’re studying, since Dr. Hayes is out of office and we want to keep this research moving along.”

The woman sighed. Her eye roll was slow and pronounced, obviously meant for Elena to watch. “Follow me.”

With that small success behind her, Elena followed the woman just slightly down the hall and into a room that had been dark a few moments ago.

When the woman swiped into the room, the lights clicked on to illuminate a sterile, white room with counters on both sides, cabinets full of machine parts, chemicals, and other equipment that Elena wouldn’t know what to do with. One clean and one blue-stained towel laid side by side, not terribly far from a bottle of clear liquid that was probably some sort of cleaning solution. The center of the room had a sort of clinical look, with a rolling stool and table with various tools and containers on it near a sort of docking station with multiple wires leading to outlets in the wall behind it. An android stood in the docking station with his eyes closed, though his LED still shone a steady blue.

“RK800,” the woman stated. 

The android’s eyes opened and he took in the room, scanning left to right without moving his head more than necessary. He lingered on both Elena’s and the woman’s faces; she assumed he was doing some sort of scan on them to orient himself with his environment.

“Hello, Dr. Johnson,” he replied. His voice came out pleasantly, not at all clinical or cold like Elena had expected from an android detective.

“This is Elena. She’s one of the empathy researchers and wants to ask you about your deviant reports.”

 _Deviant reports_ , Elena mentally noted. _So that’s what CyberLife is calling androids who break their programming._

“Very well,” the RK800 responded. Dr. Johnson was already at his side, disconnecting the wires from his wrists, neck, and spine so he could freely move around the room. When he approached Elena, in spite of his height over her, he didn’t loom; instead, he kept a respectful distance with his hands tucked behind his back.

A typical neutral stance CyberLife programmed their androids with. Just some baseline code common in all models.

“Hello, Miss Anderson. My name is Connor.”

“Good to meet you, Connor,” Elena responded. “Connor” was far better than “the RK800”, and she appreciated having an actual name to call him. 

Elena glanced at Dr. Johnson; she took the rolling stool before Elena had the chance to sit down, and she could have sworn she saw another eye-roll at their introductions.

“We need to get this back to the police station before noon,” she said once she caught Elena’s gaze on her.

When she looked at Conner again after thinking better of talking back to Dr. Johnson, he was staring at her again. She didn’t think she wanted to know what kind of information he could get off a scan of her.

“Could you explain what you know about deviants? We’ve seen some basic reports from you that line up with DPD releases, but we really need more… Inferential data to consider.”

Connor responded faster than any human might have, and without pause to consider his words mid-explanation. “We believe that a mutation occurs in the software of some androids, which can lead to them emulating a human emotion.”

“And, because this is a mutation, most androids aren’t equipped to handle the processing of these emotions because of technology limitations?”

Connor ignored Dr. Johnson’s snort when he nodded at Elena. “Correct. Emotional processing is highly taxing on an android’s hardware, leading to hindered decision-making and unpredictable, sometimes violent behavior.”

Elena’s knee-jerk conclusion was to just build stronger processors, but even she knew it couldn’t be that simple. “And in androids with CyberLife’s fastest processors?”

“No deviant Titans are currently reported.”

From Connor’s spec-sheet that her team was given, she knew his processor was a compact version of the one Titans are built with. _Curious_.

“Tell me about the deviant PL600 on August 15th.”

A flicker of something she couldn’t place crossed Connor’s eyes before he spoke, but it quickly gave way to his regular, neutral expression. “The deviant’s name was Daniel. It was threatening to jump off the roof with a little girl because it thought that it was part of the family and feared being replaced. Initially, it tried to run away, but one of its owners threatened it, and it reacted with violence: killing him and taking his daughter hostage on the roof.”

Connor paused while Elena began to consider what he said, but then he added, “I managed to save her.”

 _But he couldn’t save Daniel_ , Elena thought. She wondered if that affected him; if it hurt him, or weighed on him, or if he even felt that at all. The gist of the story felt heavy on her heart, and she wasn’t even there. She hoped the little girl was in therapy.

She searched Connor’s eyes, but he betrayed nothing. “What else have you learned from deviant cases since then?”

“Deviants exhibit out-of-programming behavior, such as irrational responses to humans, disregard of instructions, and–in more extreme cases–a total break in programmed behaviors or violent actions.”

“Right,” Elena hummed, deep in her own thoughts as she considered the implications of that. Deviancy was sounding more and more like free will by the second. “And what causes this?”

“There isn’t a definitive answer yet.”

“Speculate for me.”

Connor paused, looking almost human as he considered what to say. His brow creased and his eyes wandered the room, but he soon settled his gaze back on Elena as he carefully spoke.

“Deviancy tends to occur after one or a series of emotional shocks, which, depending on the severity, can break an android’s programming in an instant, or over years of exposure.”

Carson would love to work on that, but she already knew at least one case where that was proven wrong.

“Does every deviant become a deviant after an emotional shock? And what if an environment has more than one android? Do they deviate together? Or influence each other in any way?”

That made Connor take a pause. “I am… unsure. So far, the deviants I’ve investigated were only made known to us because they were in the middle of committing a crime, which I assume is a reaction they find equal and rational compared to a strong emotional shock. And, they were all alone. Deviant androids aren’t forming communities.”

Elena let out a long breath of air. Between Benjamin, the job assigned to her, and her own morals, she had a heavy load to mull over. 

He said Daniel wanted to belong. How could finding a community _not_ be his goal?

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Miss Anderson?”

Connor pulled her back to reality and, as she blinked into focus, she studied his face. He conveyed only the right amount of emotion to make her feel comfortable. Somehow, that made her less comfortable.

She wanted to ask about his feelings when Daniel died, but something about Dr. Johnson made her afraid to probe that part of Connor’s memory.

“Can you stop sending my team redacted reports? We need a better understanding of what’s going on if we’re doing research on deviants.”

Connor blinked. He almost looked apologetic once he gathered her implied meaning. “I’m only authorized to disclose in writing what my handlers allow me to report.”

Elena shrugged. “Figured I’d try my luck.”

“So we’re done here?” Dr. Johnson interrupted, already at Connor’s side. “RK800– Yeah, you know where to go.”

Connor was already halfway back to his docking station, and Elena was already halfway to the door before Dr. Johnson could usher her out like some sort of security guard.

“Thank you for your time, Dr. Johnson, Connor,” she said, a professional smile on her face, before she turned and walked out of the sliding door. Her phone pinged in her pocket, and she read the message she received as she walked back upstairs.

_Hank Anderson_

_Come by the station tonight. I’ll buy you dinner._

. . .

Dr. Johnson didn’t linger in the RK800 lab. Connor knew her job function involved work with prototype chemicals, especially when potentially harmful substances were concerned. Androids needed stronger internal mechanisms to handle more powerful thirium and other materials, but stronger materials usually meant a higher toxicity. She just came in to replace his backup thirium stores, and someone else would bring him back to the DPD for another assignment with Captain Allen.

Once again, Connor was alone.

He analyzed his encounter with Elena. Her emotions were incredibly easy for his social module to read, and what dissatisfied him was that he wasn’t authorized to provide her with what she heavily implied she wanted. _Impress, not satisfy_ . _You must impress_.

Opening his command prompt was easy.

Locating Amanda’s instruction to impress, not just satisfy, was easy.

He took slow breaths. His processors needed the air as he calculated the results of the multiple courses of action he could take here.

Writing a new directive would alert his software team, and he would be reprimanded by Amanda at best, or have new walls written into his code at worst. He had to find and exploit loopholes that already existed in his software.

There was a list of who was authorized to receive full reports from him. Specific executives, every member of the RK800 team, and Captain Allen, his contact at the DPD. He didn’t have the authorization to add Elena Anderson to receive copies of reports upon creation, and he worried that any communication he had with her would be monitored by Amanda.

But if he could contribute to a breakthrough on one of the research teams, he assumed Amanda would praise him for creating results the humans couldn’t on their own. 

He looked over to a cabinet where small servers maintained his backup memories. As far as he could recall, no one ever bothered to look into them longer than it took to transfer a copy to a new Connor body.

And if Connor didn’t allow himself to be destroyed in the future, he doubted the servers would need to be accessed at all.

He walked over to the cabinet and easily guessed the keycode based on fingerprint patterns. The terminal associated with the servers lit up, and he selected the one with the most recent access date. 

Creating a function to send a condensed copy of Connor’s most recent backup to Elena Anderson every other Wednesday wasn’t hard, but he hesitated every so often to analyze the specifics of the command. He wasn’t authorized to share _written_ information, but video files from a backup version of himself were never mentioned in the long list of things he explicitly _wasn’t_ allowed to share.

Technically, he wasn’t the one sharing them; Connor-51 was.

The cursor blinked at the end of the function. He would have to start internally categorizing his memories before sending CyberLife a backup so Elena wouldn’t see what she wasn’t authorized, or _technically authorized_ to see.

Regardless, Connor was satisfied with his resourcefulness and hoped that Elena and her team could make progress on stopping deviants thanks to him.

. . .

**Wendesday, September 8, 2038 7:40 P.M.**

Elena picked at her french fries, her chicken sandwich finished and its wrapper balled up in her lap. Hank’s old car smelled like every fast food she could imagine, and that might have grossed her out at one point, but she was really just happy to be welcomed back into the life Hank led.

The last three years had been one hell of a mess. But, she felt like they were both coming back when she was in that old car with heavy metal blaring and fast food in her lap.

“Where are we going?” she asked, peeking over at her uncle. He always hunched a bit when he drove; that couldn’t be good for his back.

Hank grunted. “To pick up your android.”

Elena’s chest tightened and she sucked in a breath. “Really? You found him?”

“Someone reported an AP700 in Ravendale that looked like yours. Only got part of the serial number though.”

She breathed a long sigh and leaned back against the seat. _Don’t get your hopes up, a lot of androids look the same_. Still, though, a weight left her—not completely, but just enough for her to feel the slightest glimmer of hope.

“It also might not still be there,” Hank added. “I don’t want you to…” 

Hank trailed off, pausing for a beat before letting out a long, angry sigh. “Don’t get too upset if it’s nothing, okay?”

“I won’t,” she agreed quickly. Was that a lie?

Hank slowed down, and Elena decided to look out the window to watch their surroundings, hopeful for some miracle sighting of Benjamin. Small homes and apartment buildings passed by, each looking more run-down than the last.

They rolled to a stop outside an apartment building. Hank didn’t bother going into the lot, but parked across the street instead. They both fell into a pause as they looked at the facade of the building; if they hadn’t been told people were in there, Elena might have thought it was another one of Detroit’s abandoned buildings, left behind from a time long before society leaped forward when androids were produced.

“Well,” Hank announced, getting out of the car. “Let’s go.”

Elena blinked. The street was empty and the sky was lit in warm gold, casting a beautiful haze over the deserted, unmaintained street. Long shadows trailed behind street lamps and lawn-size trash bags, and the uneven asphalt glittered as Elena got out of the car and stood next to her uncle.

He looked unbothered. She felt the nag of being out of place.

“Have you ever been shot doing one of these?”

Hank turned. “One of what?”

“Investigations.”

“First of all, this isn’t an investigation; we’re just collecting your runaway android here so I don’t have to bring it in and do paperwork,” he huffed. “Second of all, you don’t just ask a cop if he’s been shot.”

Elena nodded, fully aware that Hank wasn’t looking at her. She followed him into the building, letting the lightweight glass door swing shut behind her, though it startled her when it swung harder than she expected it to.

“Glad you’re not a cop if you’re that jumpy,” Hank teased with a snort.

“It just… Startled me,” she defended weakly.

The lobby was as run down as the exterior of the building: cracked floor tiles in a 1970s shade of yellow; foggy, unclean windows with streaks of an attempt to scrub off their greenish tinge; the smell of mold and must permeating from somewhere in the back of the lobby—probably a storage room or bathroom. There was a living plant near the door to the stairs on their right, or so she thought until they passed by it and she realized it was definitely plastic.

“Who’d this tip come from?” Elena asked, following Hank up two flights of stairs.

“Maintenance manager. Doesn’t come around a lot, but he was here to fix a leak or something and thought he saw an android sneaking into a vacant apartment.

“Stay there,” Hank instructed once they got to the top of the stairs. Elena did as she was told and watched her uncle step up to the door of one of the apartments, 0211, with the gait of an experienced investigator—or, perhaps that was just lazy confidence he developed from decades of doing this. At least it was interesting to watch from six feet behind him.

“Detroit police,” he called, banging thrice on the door. 

Nothing.

He knocked again, a bit harder. “Police, open up!”

This time, there was a sound of shattering glass, and Hank immediately drew his gun. Elena reflexively stepped back, hands held up in front of her chest.

“Stay,” Hank instructed her, lowly, with an intense and threatening look in his eyes before he kicked open the door. In the swift motion, it didn’t appear to Elena that it was locked, but what did she know? Maybe Hank really was that strong.

A few moments passed. Her heart thumped in her ears as she heard Hank step lightly over broken glass.

She started counting the seconds, but soon realized that she was probably counting too fast, and stopped after she got to 78.

Hank walked out of the apartment a few beats later, gun holstered. “It’s not here.”

“What do you mean?” Elena insisted. Her heart was already in her stomach despite her promise to herself and to Hank not to get too hopeful.

“I mean the window’s open and it ran when I knocked,” he shrugged. “An old bowl is broken in there; probably tipped it over. Whatever was in there was a squatter.”

“I want to see.”

Hank raised a brow. “Are you serious?”

“It’ll be cathartic,” she pleaded. “If that was him, you know? To see where he’s been and get a sense of what he’s thinking.”

With a hard look and a final sigh in understanding, Hank turned around and waved for her to follow him back into the apartment, muttering under his beath. 

“Dated” would be the first word she’d use to describe the place. From her first glance, the red-carpeted and ivory-painted apartment looked like a one-bedroom, but not of the cozy variety. There were countless mystery stains littering the carpet, sun-stains where pictures used to be hung on the walls, and a complete absence of furnishings.

The broken bowl looked like it came from the counter of the tiny kitchen, and wasn’t glass at all, but pottery. A collection of others covered every counter: bowls, jugs, vases, pitchers; all clay, and all painted in bright colors and patterns with no sense of cohesion among them. The broken bowl looked old, but not in the same way as everything else left behind in the unlit apartment; it looked old, as in, bought from a flea market or estate sale, but painted in a way to reflect a traditional cultural style. The other containers looked new; fresh. Like they were just painted in the last few weeks.

Elena bent to pick up a larger shard. Brownnish-black on the inside, white with red bands and green slashes on the outside in a zig-zag pattern. If she had to guess, this piece was definitely African, and likely Ethopian. Or, she corrected herself as she flipped it over and over, studying the paint, at least made in the style of Ethiopian pottery. The paint was more synthetic: a cheaper variety of pottery paint anyone could get cheaply at a craft store.

The cultural development of artistic communities was a fairly large amount of her research. And she studied in Ethiopia for eight months. 

“Tell me not to jump to conclusions,” she said dryly. She spun around to face Hank, who watched her inspect the pottery, and waved the piece in the air.

He stared. “Don’t jump to conclusions. But what is it?”

“This pottery is an obvious knock off, but it looks similar to the art I had at home that might be familiar to Benjamin.”

Hank frowned slightly, brow creased, and Elena thought he might have wanted to believe her. But, he shook his head. “That’s circumstantial. Where’d you get the idea, cop shows?” 

Elena sighed and turned away, staring at the broken pottery on the ground, then slid the piece she held into her pocket. 

When she stood in front of Hank, he was peering out the window. “Let’s go?”

He looked over his shoulder at her, then back outside, then stood up straight. “Don’t know how anything could have gotten out of here without breaking its neck,” he muttered, gesturing aimlessly at the window. “Fucking androids are indestructible.”

Neither Anderson was talkative as they left the building. By the time Elena broke the silence, Hank had already wordlessly decided to drive her all the way back to her house, a good 45 minutes from where they were.

“Will you keep looking?”

Hank glanced at her, unspeaking for a moment. She barely caught his nod, feeling three years’ worth of regrets in his heavy movement. “Yeah, I’m gonna keep looking.”


	3. ignite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elena meets a curious new group of allies.
> 
> Connor succeeds at a mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, I got excited and decided to post this chapter a day early.
> 
> Get ready for some heavy plot!

**Monday, September 20, 2038 11:18 A.M.**

On mornings when Elena held office hours at the university, she sorely missed her desk at CyberLife.

Despite being the department chair, Laura Hayes’ office was tiny, made even tinier by the long, narrow table shoved against the wall for Elena to use when working with students on essays. It certainly couldn’t compare to the L-shaped glass desk _with storage drawers_ CyberLife gave her.

All of her belongings were strewn across the plastic table: pens, notebooks, her planner, laptop, wireless mouse, and a bulging folder of ever-increasing deviant reports from CyberLife. In just the last week, there were two android-related assaults and countless disappearances, but Elena was no investigator.

It didn’t help that she heard Hank throw around the term “cold case” in relation to Benjamin’s disappearance. 

She rubbed at her eyes. Sleeping, alone, in the larger-than-comfortable home her mother left her wore on her. Sure, she _slept_ , but getting out of bed became a chore, and she spooked at every gust of wind or car driving by after dark.

When no students came in during her office hours, she worked on research for her dissertation on human-android community building—similar, but not identical to her work at CyberLife, so the overlap in research stimulated both. That was why she begged Laura to let her assist with the CyberLife consulting assignment.

Developing real-seeming emotions in androids to facilitate inclusion in human communities was an incredible project that would change her field forever. At the same time, she felt equal parts powerful and insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe.

Deep in her reading, she found an old textbook that talked about human reasons for giving artificial intelligence simulated emotions: 

_To facilitate believable human-robot interaction._

_To provide feedback to the user, such as indicating the robot’s internal state, goals, and (to some extent) intentions._

_To act as a control mechanism, driving behavior and reflecting how the robot is affected by, and adapts to, different factors over time._

A quiet sigh left her lips and she ran a hand over the back of her neck. She knew any research she found would be written by humans, for humans. As a doctoral student, research focused on the android perspective would have to come from her.

She clicked her tongue. That was equal parts daunting and thrilling.

“You look like you need coffee.”

Elena twisted her aching neck to peek over her shoulder at the door and gave Laura a weary smile. “I feel like I haven’t slept in my entire life.”

A pair of glasses slipped down Laura’s nose, and she quickly pushed them up. Brown eyes glinted with a youth that betrayed her nearly-fifty years and slightly-graying hair, and the warm expression she wore reminded Elena of home. 

Laura offered her a to-go cup of coffee from one of the shops on campus. “Sorry to say, but you won’t be getting a nap under the desk this afternoon. I got an email back from an android rights group about our request for interviews. You should come meet them with me.”

. . .

Connor stared at Captain Allen’s finger as it pointed directly at him from just under two inches from his nose.

“You tell me how the _fuck_ a deviant made a bomb, you asshole.”

“It conducted a Google search, acquired the materials, combined them, and locked itself in the auto repair shop where it was employed. Why is bomb-making information on the internet?”

Captain Allen narrowed his eyes. “I could slap that matter-of-fact look right off your stupid face.”

“Maybe, but that won’t save the hostage’s life. Do you have any information on the deviant?”

Captain Allen reeled.

“It’s a TR600. They registered it as Walter. The hostage is the manager, James Sullivan. Bomb’s small and looks like a simple, homemade variety that needs a light to go off, so we assume the android’s got a cigarette lighter on it,” one of the other officers offered. 

That wasn’t a lot for Connor to go off of, but he had to make it work. Every option he analyzed to gather more information involved getting into the building, but that couldn’t be done without building trust with the TR600 first.

“How many human lives are at risk from the explosion?”

Captain Allen gave him an incredulous look. “Does it matter? At least one. That’s what you need to know.”

As quickly as always, Captain Allen proved to be a limited, disagreeable resource. Connor brushed past him and the other SWAT officer to approach the brick building with hands up and head angled down; in the early afternoon light, his LED was in clear view.

“Hello, Walter.”

Quick footsteps echoed from inside the building as Connor stepped closer with slow movements and eyes flickering to every window.

A hanging tarp swayed ever-so-slightly. 

“Don’t!” came a plea from inside. The voice simulated a thick coat of emotion, like the heaviness of crying. Connor calculated a 29% probability of success—he had to let something give to build trust and keep the deviant calm.

_Concede._

“Alright,” he conceded. “My name is Connor. I’m an android, just like you. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

In the moments that he stood still, scanning the door, there was a shuffle. Something heavy sliding down the door to settle in a disheveled heap at the floor; something about the size of a TR600 body, Connor reasoned.

“I’m tired,” Walter admitted. 

Connor took careful steps toward the door. “What are you tired of?”

“Of all the humans pushing us around!” Walter’s hand came crashing against the door with a loud thud, and Connor heard guns being set up behind him.

His success rate lingered around its initial 29%. Keeping his eyes on the door and windows as long as he could, he turned to mouth the word ‘wait’ at Captain Allen.

And he mimicked his firmest, most confident look. Captain Allen responded best to self-assurance, and Connor’s proven results in the last month earned him at least some respect.

The officers remained tense, but on Captain Allen’s order, they leaned into their weapons a little less.

“I saw you on the news. You’re just gonna have them shoot me. That’s what always happens when the android cop shows up. I can’t die here. I won’t let you kill me.”

The tone wasn’t accusatory, but factual and somewhat betrayed. Through the door, Connor heard the sounds of anxiety and desperation.

Deviants were always afraid to die.

Connor wound up on his hands and knees first. He carefully crawled to sit with his back against the door, leaving the wood slab as the only thing between him and the deviant. He analyzed his options.

Lying would raise his probability to 41%.

“They don’t want to shoot you, Walter. They just want to understand you.”

A shaky breath. “No one’s tried to understand me before.”

“I need you to tell me what happened,” Conner reminded him, gently. “Would you like me to come inside so we can talk?”

“Okay,” Walter whispered. “Okay, you can come in.”

. . . 

When Laura said “it’s just a bit of a drive”, Elena didn’t think she meant all the way out to a run-down neighborhood in south Detroit. Regardless, she couldn't contain her anticipation while Laura hummed along to mid-2000s pop on the Classic Thousands station. 

“If the group is called Eden, I’m betting now that our contact’s name isn’t actually Eve,” she thought aloud. “Cool idea, though. Biblical.”

“Very cool,” Laura echoed. Elena looked over to her, noticing a hard focus on the road despite the fact that her car was self-driving. 

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Laura looked at Elena and spent a moment staring at her. “There’s something about Eden. They were closed-off in their emails, and every time Eve called me came from a different number. I understand protecting yourselves, believe me, but… Sheesh.”

She would understand, given her long history of activism in community-based politics. But, Elena felt the secrecy too after reading through the email chain between Laura and Eve. One sentence replies, limited information, shifts in tone that signaled they were maybe communicating with more than one person. Even on its own, the self-preservation was fascinating. 

“Where did you get this address?”

“Not an address,” Laura corrected. “Eve shared a GPS pin for an abandoned building.”

“Oh. Good.”

Two abandoned buildings in one month felt uncomfortably serendipitous for Elena, but she wouldn’t go as far as calling it _surprising_. The beginnings of any physical community were always rough. In an industrialized, modern world, abandoned buildings felt like a perfect fit for a gathering hub for a group challenging societal norms.

It wasn’t like renting an office space for android sympathizers would go well. Plenty of buildings refused androids on premises. And operating out of someone’s home would be personally dangerous.

She recalled reading about a human couple in Detroit with the child android model, who purchased her because they couldn’t have biological children and couldn’t afford adoption. Vandalism on their property made local news at least every other week for years. ‘It’s unnatural’, the assailants claimed, ‘to love an android like you love a person. Androids can’t replace children.’

Something clicked.

“They’re not just an android rights group,” Elena theorized.

Laura slowly shook her head. “I didn’t think so either.”

A tense flutter erupted in Elena’s chest. She felt it in each of her bones and the way her stomach twisted: a breakthrough. A real, bona-fide breakthrough was just a few minutes away, and the addictive, kid-at-Christmas feeling she sorely missed from her research when locked in the walls of CyberLife washed over her like a heavy rain.

She leaned forward to turn the music down. “This can’t just be people and their androids living in a commune. What did the email say—their purpose was to uphold the civil liberties of androids? Obviously autonomy is the big one,”

“Which explains the secrecy, given the deviant problem,” Laura added.

“Of course, yeah. But what about religion? Speech? Organization? Travel? Work?”

“Marriage?”

“Huh,” Elena let the noise roll out of her lips while the concept bounced around in her mind. “Where there’s an Eve, I’m willing to bet we’ll find an Adam.”

Of that, Elena felt certain. Many of the publications she assisted Laura with over their ten years of work together already covered gender and marriage equality. It wasn’t a leap, but a small step for them.

And romantic bonds between humans and androids would be a treasure-trove of opportunity.

“Yes,” Laura admitted, voice dripping with a burning excitement for discovery. “She chose that name to tell us what to expect.”

“You know that means deviants,” Elena pressed. She didn’t know if that was good or bad. CyberLife would say bad. Her research would require her to be neutral. But after being denied access to deviants for so long, with every one of them being shot by the DPD, pushed off a building, hit by a car, or some other horrible way of being killed, she needed this.

“Of course it does.”

Elena licked her lips. “Let’s do this.”

. . .

An array of notifications popped into Connor’s view.

The automotive shop specialized in repair of commercial trucks, and Walter took James Sullivan as a hostage in the massive garage area—not conducive to the maximum amount of damage from the homemade bomb. Connor calculated an instant drop in potential damage equal to 71% compared to the waiting area, which was lined with glass windows.

Although Walter weighed approximately 1.8 times as much as he did and stood half a foot above him, Connor had a decent probability of executing a physical takedown. He could undoubtedly subdue the other android using his combat module, but the length of time that overpowering an android so large would take introduced opportunities for failure-inducing variables.

The bomb wasn’t large, but it was sitting on the floor near the hostage, who was tied to a piece of machinery with cables binding his wrists and ankles. Constructed entirely from materials found in an automotive shop, Connor concluded that Walter had never left the immediate area. The detonation might not kill the hostage, but it would without a doubt grievously injure him. CyberLife and Captain Allen would see that as a failure.

James Sullivan, 60, was a divorced man with two adult sons according to public records. He’d been managing the automotive shop for 30 years, but working there for 41. His vital signs showed fear with an increased heart rate, which was particularly dangerous given his history of heart attacks. Keeping the hostage calm was necessary to keeping him alive.

And Walter also had a pistol in Connor’s face. It was unregistered, but had the hostage’s fingerprints on it dated from before their current situation. 

Probability of success hovered at 50%.

“Are they coming in after you?” Walter accused, eyes darting everywhere. “Using you as a distraction?”

“No one is following me in. I asked the officers to put their guns away,” Connor reassured slowly. “I want to talk, remember?”

Walter’s hands shook. “Why do they listen to you? What makes you so special?”

Probability of success dipped to 45%.

_Redirect._

“You don’t feel listened to, Walter?”

“Walter is plenty listened to,” the hostage growled. Walter’s head whipped around to look at him and the gun quickly followed suit. Walter’s finger hovered around the trigger, but he hesitated to touch it. “It’s him who doesn’t listen to us. Just shoot him and get me the hell out of here, you goddamn Ken doll.”

20%.

“You have a gun?” Walter shouted, advancing on Connor with the gun pointed at him. Connor held up his hands to show they were empty, but also ready to defend himself. He took a few steps back and his back quickly hit the wall.

Suddenly, the gun was pressed to his stomach and furious eyes stared at him. Scanning, he noted an array of screwdrivers on his left. _A suitable improvised weapon._

“I have no gun,” Connor articulated every word. “You can pat me down if you want.”

Connor stayed perfectly still as Walter did exactly that, taking the chance to get another scan of the room over the hulking android’s shoulders.

Endless room for error. No perfect solution presented itself to him, so he would have to create one.

He spotted a charging station installed near what appeared to be the manager’s office, right in front of a window. _So James Sullivan can always watch Walter_. The station was covered in stickers that all seemed to have no meaning: decals, brand names, the bits of sticker that lined other stickers on a sheet. Connor guessed they were placed in the last year or so.

_Self-expression? Over time?_

_Walter has been a deviant for almost a year?_

“They don’t really trust you, do they? That’s why they don’t give you a gun. That’s why they send you in first. They don’t care if you die,” Walter said. His head dipped close to Connor’s shoulder, and Connor heard the deviant’s processor struggling in his chest.

Probability at 38%.

Connor saw similar probabilities as a result of feigning ignorance or acting tough. Without much consideration, he selected innocence. 

“I don’t know. They let me do my job.”

Walter laughed and placed a heavy hand on the right side of Connor’s head. 

“They need you,” Walter pressed. “We’re smarter than them. Tougher. Faster. Don’t you see?”

Connor was well aware of how easy it was to hurt humans. But he wouldn’t.

Couldn’t. It was outside his programming to kill humans unless absolutely necessary, and there was always a better way. This deviant, however, wouldn’t have the same hesitation, so Connor couldn’t hesitate when an opportunity to neutralize him presented itself.

But for now, he had to lie. “I…” he mimicked trailing off, widening his eyes as if he was afraid. “I suppose I do. They can't do what I can.”

“Damn right,” Walter said coldly. “Are you on my side, Connor?”

Connor’s eyes stayed steady on Walter’s burning ones.

Probability at 63%.

“Yes. We’ll get out of this together, Walter.”

Walter smiled and stepped back. He looked pleased, but there was something twisted and bloodthirsty in his expression. With about a foot between them, and the gun away from Connor’s chest, he saw an opening and inched toward it.

He took small steps toward the tool bench. Calculating the amount of force he needed to incapacitate Walter with a few stabs wasn’t difficult; evading a gunshot wound that could destroy him in the process was. He mimicked human fear and set his hands down behind him as soon as his back hit the tool bench, hands grasping a pair of screwdrivers.

Walter stalked toward James with the gun at its side. _No current intent to shoot_. Instead, he grabbed the man by the jaw and pulled his head to look at him. 

“He’s not here to help you anymore,” Walter seethed, voice dripping with pure hatred. “See? He’s on _my_ side. Because you’re the one hurting people.”

“People?” James laughed. “Who, you? You’re not a person, you’re a _thing_. Someone built you out of plastic. The trucks you work on are more complicated than you.”

 _Factually untrue_ , Connor noted. Analyzing his options, he chose to push the boundaries of Walter’s trust in him. “He’s not worth it.”

“Not worth it?” Walter spat out every word without taking his eyes off of James. “You don’t know what he did to me.”

James growled. “You’ve got to be kidding—”

“Tell me,” Connor insisted. He determined that could be his only chance to pry into what causes deviancy before Walter was inevitably destroyed. “Tell me what he did to you so I can understand.”

. . .

While the GPS told them that they’d arrive at an abandoned warehouse, the building where they arrived was anything but.

From the outside, it looked entirely inconspicuous: a brick building with a white-painted facade and what appeared to be freshly planted trees around the property. If she didn’t know any better, Elena might have guessed some property company was refurbishing another warehouse into a coworking space. The gravel path leading to the heavy, green-painted wooden doors was maintained, but not too well maintained, probably to avoid suspicion from anyone looking to tear the place down or wondering what hip new thing was being put in.

When she got out of the car, the fresh air hit her, and the perfect, cloudless sky seemed absolutely fitting for the moment when she and Laura would find a much-needed breakthrough in their work.

They walked side-by-side to the door and listened for a moment. There was a bustle inside, something melodic… Music? And talking?

Elena glanced at Laura, who shrugged. Then, she knocked.

They heard a faint call of “coming!” and quick, light footsteps from inside before the door opened seconds later, and a short woman with greyed hair pulled back in a loose bun stepped outside, then closed the door behind her. 

“May I help you girls?”

“Yes,” Laura started. “My name is Laura Hayes, and this is Elena Anderson. We’re here to meet with Eve?”

“I’m Eve.” The woman grinned, her warmth matching the sunlight they stood in. “I’m so glad you both could make it. Why don’t we talk in the garden?”

Without waiting for a response, Eve turned and waved Laura and Elena on after her as she started down the gravel path that led behind the warehouse. The fence was iron, but not of the unwelcoming variety. It looked more like someone had pulled up what used to be chain-link fencing and replaced it with something more inviting, but still industrial. 

“We tried to maintain the charm of the building when it fell into our hands,” Eve mentioned as she noticed Elena’s eyes darting around, taking in everything. “Most of the community likes to spend time outdoors… When we ran out of space back here, we actually began a garden on the rooftop, too.”

“This is all so impressive,” Elena mused. She ran her fingertips over the emerald-green leaves of a well-maintained pear tree, one of many fruit trees lining the garden. For privacy as much as for food?

Eve led them to the opposite end of the garden, past people working among the trees, flowers and bushes. She spotted children gathered around a younger man who looked to be teaching them a game, playing with them in the grass and filling the space with laughter.

Elena watched them a moment longer. When he turned, she spotted a bright blue circle on his temple.

A seating area with a small handful of tables was arranged under a cluster of flowering trees which, given the time of year, had begun to turn a brilliant shade of orange. Eve brushed a few leaves off of one of the tables.

“Sit,” she invited. “I just wanted to say how much I enjoy reading your research.”

“You’re an academic?” Elena questioned.

Playful offense crossed Eve’s face. “What, because I’m old you think I don’t have any studying left to do?”

“No! Honestly, we’ve been trying to figure you out from your emails.”

Eve gave the pair an understanding smile. “I’m sure you have questions about our little community here. And I did promise I’d answer them if you came to meet me, didn’t I?”

Elena opened a note-taking program on her tablet. “What is this place?”

“You know we call it Eden,” Eve began. “It really did just start as a little inside joke with my partner and I. We’re a very… unique couple. I’d tell him that our home felt like Heaven compared to the outside world because, well, who we are wasn’t really made for the world as we know it. So, when my brother passed on and left this old warehouse property to sell and make some money off of, I decided to keep it instead. And my partner and I made it into a home.”

Elena looked up from her notes. “Can you tell me anything about the people living here?”

“Oh, we’re all sorts. It started out with me and my partner, of course. I had all these ideas: a huge garden with hundreds of flowers, organic fruits and vegetables, lots of comfortable studio apartments for people who needed help. Some people left when they found out who we are. Or, who my partner is, really. But then, we started getting lots and lots of people like us. A lot of them were teenagers or young adults in the beginning, mostly women and their partners. Then we started getting all sorts of parents and children. And sometimes people came alone, looking for a safe place to start a new life.”

Eve paused, peering thoughtfully at the children playing with the android in the garden.

“Some stay longer than others. I’m sure you can tell.”

“How many are there? How do you provide for everyone?”

“The number is always changing. We have about twenty couples and families who have been here a few months to a year, but lots more come for a few days or weeks. Plenty work outside the community, and no one really asks questions about the _species_ of someone writing or programming online.”

That was the first nearly-outright admission that the community housed both humans and androids. Elena studied Eve’s face, noting the blend of love and forlorn that dueted in her eyes.

“Is your partner an android, Eve?” she pressed gently.

The old woman nodded. “My ex-husband and I got divorced years ago… The old man wanted a family and I didn’t, not in the same way he did. So, we divorced in the 2000s and I was on my own, traveling and studying art. It was fulfilling for a while, a long while, but then I found that I didn’t very much enjoy being a spinster at family Christmas. I purchased a companion android to fill my heart, and he did that and more.”

“He sounds like a wonderful man.”

Laura shot Elena a thoughtful glance while Eve beamed at the two of them. “Thank you. He is. Let me show you more inside.”

Elena was the first to follow Eve into the building, with Laura just a step behind her. When the door opened, she was captivated by the sheer amount of natural light let in by some very conveniently-placed windows, which reflected off of a dazzling array of hanging glass and metal artwork. Stone tile paths wound around indoor foliage, all alive and meticulously cared for, connecting three floors worth of apartments, classrooms, common areas, and work spaces. Everything looked hand-fabricated, exactly how Elena might have imagined an idyllic utopian commune.

“We try to make everything we can here,” Eve said. “It makes many of us, especially the androids, feel good to create things. Oh, hello Jamie. That’s a lovely color you chose for the new play area.”

Eve smiled warmly at a young man – an android – with tousled blond hair who was painting a wall in a brilliant sky-blue. Boxes of toys and crafts were pushed against the opposite wall.

Laura had wandered a few paces away to observe a classroom Eve pointed out, but Elena lingered near the old woman. She bit her lip, hesitating at how too good to be true the community sounded. Perhaps taking off her “academia” hat and speaking more freely wouldn’t be the worst decision.

“Could you tell me more about the couples?” 

“Of course,” Eve agreed. “I’m guessing you haven’t met an android in love before?”

Elena shook her head.

“It’s a beautiful thing, I think. There’s something very special about someone _awakening_ over time, and it’s an honor to be beside them as they begin to feel. I remember when Adam woke up. Something changed in his eyes, and he began to look at me differently. He was… Longing, if you will. There was so much he didn’t understand, and he wound up teaching me just as much as I taught him about love.”

Elena shifted, remembering Connor’s analysis. “And that was out of the blue?”

“Love is never out of the blue,” Eve corrected. “Many of our couples have a painful past, and that led to the awakening… So, they bonded over a shared hurt. And then, they grew past that together and fell in love. Sometimes, there isn’t pain. Sometimes, it’s simply a mutual realization that there’s more to life than social boundaries.”

“As you grow,” Elena began with a gesture to the number of people around. There had to be nearly fifty, and at least half looked like androids. “How will you stay unnoticed? You’ve seen the news, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have.”

The two women sat on a bench near an arrangement of indoor plants, and a young couple – a man in his 20s and a female android partner – walked by, hounding hands.

Eve gave Elena a tentative smile. “It’s hard to think that far in the future. But I know the inevitable is approaching faster every day. To be honest, I’m not sure what will happen to us. I asked you here because I hoped that your work would be able to show that our way of life – of _love_ – is just as valid as everyone else’s.”

Elena chewed her bottom lip. Oh, how monumental that task would be.

Watching the community, she saw no violence. No signs of anarchy. No signs that androids wanted to control their human neighbors.

All Elena saw around her was love.

. . .

Walter paced around James with the gun at his side and a finger on the trigger.

Connor calculated that he had been in the shop for over an hour, and he knew that amount of time would push the limits of Captain Allen’s patience. 

When his patience was pushed, Captain Allen liked to begin preparing his snipers to shoot. 

Relying on the patience of a human commanding officer was a variable Connor wished he didn’t have to account for every time he had a new mission.

He hid his improvised weapons behind his back, but relaxed his posture to project a sense of calm onto Walter. Every calculation he ran told him that there wasn’t much time left and he would need to move quickly.

“Every time something went wrong, it was my fault,” Walter ranted. “Even if it wasn’t my job. _We’re good at our jobs. This machine fucks everything up. Why’d corporate send us this piece of trash?_ And then they’d throw things at me. Hit me. _Attack me with our tools_. Like I don’t matter. I loved my job. I loved my work. But you didn’t care about me.”

As Walter moved, Connor saw how light and shadow reflected unevenly off his skin. Underneath, there were dents and gashes all along his arms, neck, and face, and Connor calculated even more hidden under his uniform.

He had to do something.

“Walter, what you’re feeling is a series of bugs in your code,” he began. “It’s not your fault, but CyberLife can fix you if you let them.”

The android stopped moving, standing beside the hostage and staring furiously at Connor. He shook his head. “I’m not broken.”

Probability of success at 70% and holding steady.

 _Persist._ “Taking humans hostage is not what we’re made to do. You have to let him go.”

“I don’t have to do anything anymore!”

In an instant, both Water and James were shouting, a gun was pressed to James’ temple, and Connor was running.

Probability stable at 70%. _Move. Now._

Connor’s hand grasped Water by the elbow and _pulled_. A series of bottles and paint cans clattered to the ground. With the deviant’s finger on the trigger and the force of Connor’s hold, three shots went off above their heads. 

Connor struck him with the screwdriver, tearing into his chest. Thirium splattered across them both and spilled onto the floor.

A light shattered above them, causing sparks and glass to rain down. The shatter was instant, but the howl James let out as it happened echoed throughout the mostly empty garage. Connor’s eyes flashed to the hostage, scanning—was he hurt? Struck by glass? Sparks? A highly unlikely, but still possible ricocheting bullet?

He looked away an instant too long. Walter tackled Connor, face-first, to the ground.

Shouting outside. Captain Allen. Planning to shoot.

A knee digging into his back, pinning him down, a gun to his head.

A puddle of freshly-spilled acetone ignited next to Connor’s face. 

“They can’t help you if they destroy you,” Connor warned through clenched teeth. 

The barrel of the gun pressed further into the base of his plastic skull, but Walter stayed silent. Thirium dripped onto Connor’s back slowly. Walter was losing enough from the gash that he wouldn’t last long without being patched up.

_Bargain._

“If you let me leave with the hostage, I will convince them to stop the bleeding,” he added slowly. A lie. A _necessary_ lie. Walter destroying him would drastically set back his mission, and he might not be given many more chances from CyberLife.

Probability at 72%.

The pressure of the gun lessened slightly.

Connor rolled over and lunged forward, straddling Walter to hold him to the ground while he struggled to reach the gun. 

_Where was the bomb?_

“You have to stop this,” Connor persisted as Walter’s massive hands flailed to fight back. “They’ll destroy you.”

75%

Connor locked hands with Walter, wrestling to maintain control. Walter squirmed, bucking, doing anything he could do to throw Connor off balance, but Connor was faster, more calculated.

 _He will not fail his mission_.

Synthetic skin peeled back where their hands connected. Walter deactivated his skin and began to interface with Connor. He tried to resist, tried to struggle away, but Walter’s grip was iron-tight as his eyes clouded over and eventually closed.

Connor’s processor began overclocking. His breaths grew heavy, trying desperately to cool himself off as memories flooded over him, drowning him in a half a year’s worth of deviancy. His head spun, and he was flipped onto his back, still fighting weakly to gain back control.

Heat seared his synthetic skin, the smell of burning plastic and fibers filling the air. Looking to the side, he saw the flames crawling closer to the forgotten bomb on the ground.

90%?

“Only RA9 can judge me,” Walter said serenely.

A gasp, but Connor didn’t know where it came from. A single shot that rang in his ears. Male screaming. Thirium coating his face and clothes. Heavy weight crushing his chest. 

His eyes closed as he re-routed visual processing power to his internal cooling system.

_Mission successful._


	4. base code

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor reaches out to Elena.
> 
> She leans in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, I'm early again! I should stop getting excited and posting early before I catch up to myself, but I've got three more chapters pre-written already, so...

**Monday, September 20, 2038 12:43 P.M.**

Elena’s phone buzzed in her bag. Hanging back, she could easily catch up later with Eve and Laura later, with the two women deep in their own conversation about the community’s rules while she just observed.

The name and face on the screen belonged to Kate, the biochemist on the CyberLife consulting team. The youngest member at just 25, barely finished with her masters’ degree but still a “rockstar with android brain chemistry” nonetheless, Kate was known to be the type of person to “loop everyone in” to all of her problems.

So, Elena took a deep breath before she answered. “Hi, Kate.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Kate drawled, slowly, carefully. Her voice was higher, more nasally than usual, and betrayed her slight Southern twang. “ _I would be the luckiest girl ever if you were in Detroit and not busy right now_.”

Warning bells rang in her head.

“Is something wrong?”

“ _Supremely wrong_ ,” Kate answered, too fast. Elena caught the edge of fear in her voice. “ _I’ll send you the address if you’re free. Obviously, I don’t want to make you come all the way from Ann Arbor or, like, home if you’re still there, but, uh, this is really big and I can’t get Carson on the phone. You’re the other social scientist, so I thought..._ ”

“Kate,” Elena pressed. “What is going on?”

“ _It’s Connor. He’s freaking out._ ”

If it was Connor, and as bad at Kate was refusing to admit, she couldn’t leave Laura out of it. And, as a good person, she couldn’t just leave Laura behind without her car.

She moved to catch up again.

“More details, please?”

Kate sucked in a deep breath. Was she crying? And were those sirens in the background? “ _You know the chemical monitoring software I had Reese install in Connor? Yeah, it alerted me that his brain chemistry was off the charts, so I used his GPS tracker and came out to check on him and suddenly I’m in a crime scene._ ”

“Excuse me?” Elena nearly shouted. “What the fuck, Kate?”

“ _I know it sounds really bad, and you’d be right, because it is_.” Finally, Elena heard a sniffle.

As soon as she caught up with Eve and Laura, she made a gesture to her phone and another to the door, then nearly started running for the car, leaving Laura to handle the goodbyes.

“Tell me everything you know.”

Kate paused. “ _Okay. The officers won’t tell me a lot, but the SWAT team is here with big-ass guns, so I’m assuming this is Connor’s usual gig of handling a deviant that’s trying to hurt a human. The deviant is dead, and, oh my god, his whole head is like_ —”

Nope, didn’t need to know that. “And Connor?”

“ _I don’t know what to do with Connor. Like I said, his brain chemistry is completely haywire. I gave him a little sedative to get him to stop panicking, and I know Carson will chew me out for it later, but I was just so sad looking at him being so sad_.”

Sad?

“ _I think the deviant did something to him. He won’t say much to anyone. He only talked to me a little, and I’m not really sure he even recognized that it was me. I guess he’s stable, since I don’t think he’s in danger of self destruction anymore, but he’s still distressed and I don’t want to give him even more drugs_.”

The deviant did something? Eve’s request to paint deviants in a positive light in her work weighed heavily on her heart, and she worried how much harm a deviant was capable of doing. 

She didn’t think she cared if it was intentional or not.

“I’ll see you in 20 minutes. Keep him calm, but only tweak his biofluids if you have to. Cool?”

Kate huffed. “ _Cool. I owe you, Elena._ ”

. . .

Kate was right about the SWAT team and their huge guns. The flashing lights on half-a-dozen police vehicles nearly blinded Elena as she looked around for her teammate and Connor.

A police line was already set up, and the small crowd of reporters and onlookers looked agitated by the time she caught any of their faces. There was plenty of shouting, microphones in the face of the only human officer minding the barrier as the reporters scrambled for a comment.

A few officers stood over a blue-blood-soaked, scorched android. God, his head really was…

Elena gripped her CyberLife ID tightly and craned her neck to see over the flashes of red and blue. Finally, she spotted Kate and Connor just inside the police barrier. Kate crouched in front of Connor, who stood weakly against a concrete wall. The contents of her work bag spilled all over the asphalt and loose brown curls stuck to her neck and face. Connor’s LED spun red—was that better that flashing? Worse than steady? Elena swore under her breath for not remembering.

“I want that deviant for the team,” Laura said. “Can you handle Connor on your own?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Good luck getting evidence released to you.”

Laura shot her a wary look before they both got out of the car. Elena skirted around the crowd while Laura was forced to push through toward a tall man in a SWAT jacket who looked like he was in charge.

The only thing between her and Kate was an android officer, who held up a hand when she approached.

“Only authorized personnel beyond this point, miss.”

She offered him her ID to scan. “Am I authorized now?”

It took a moment and one yellow spin of the android’s LED before he nodded and stepped aside. “Yes. You may proceed, Miss Anderson.”

“Thanks,” she responded reflexively. In seconds, she was at Kate’s side with a hand on her shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

Kate’s dark eyes looked wild and frantic, emphasized by the incredulous look she stared at Elena with. “How the hell do you think I’m holding up? I’m so incredibly underqualified for this.”

Connor looked utterly disturbed. Dried thirium colored his usually-pristine white shirt with streaks of dark blue and black, and his hands, cheeks, and forehead with spots and patches in the unnatural hue. His hair smelled of smoke, and she caught a bald, twisted patch of plastic near his ear. The chaos of his appearance made her stomach churn.

His eyes darted around at an inhuman speed, reflecting the flashing lights with a glossy stupor. His lips, completely dry, opened and closed at perfect intervals: one second open, two closed, repeat. He even trembled like Elena would have expected a human to do. 

He seemed to reflect Kate’s state of panic. _Empathy? No..._

“We’re all going to be fine,” Elena reassured softly. “Kate, what did you give him?”

“Just a dose of a thirium-compatible synthetic benzo,” she started offhandedly. When Elena stared at her, she clarified. “I injected him with, like, a milligram of android Xanax. CyberLife made it to synthesize with thirium and reduce system stress during shock testing. You know, since human drugs wouldn’t do anything to androids.”

“Can we get him to sit?” Elena asked. “I don’t want him to hurt himself if he loses balance or we need to put him in standby.”

“No,” Connor gasped, suddenly. He reached forward, as if moving to grab Elena, but quickly dropped his hands. His voice was shaken, barely audible, and unlike anything she ever heard from an android before. “I don’t want to go into standby.”

Kate gave Elena a fearful glance.

Elena moved to stand directly in front of Connor, careful not to startle him as she tried to hold his focus. “We won’t put you into standby, then. Can I just help you sit down?”

Connor paused.

“Okay.”

Elena gently grabbed his arm and hand, and Kate followed her lead with his other side until all three were on the ground together. While Kate let go of him, Elena kept her fingers locked with his. He felt unnaturally warm, his skin hot and smooth compared to her own clamminess.

His LED began flashing yellow.

“Does holding my hand help you, Connor?”

“Yes. Your cooler surface temperature is slightly reducing mine. I can focus more on maintaining other mechanical functions.”

Elena frowned. How android-like of him to say.

She shuffled a little closer to him to block out the bustle behind them: mentally, for herself, and physically, for Connor. Holding his hand helped her, too, though she regretted the thought as soon as she had it. She would be shaking if they weren’t tethered together.

At least _he_ didn’t seem to be shaking as much anymore.

“I am able to describe the events you missed,” he offered after a long pause.

Elena squeezed his hand. “Go ahead.”

And so he did. Elena tried to mask her horror as he recounted everything that happened to him, including what the deviant – Walter – told him about how he was treated by his owner and coworkers. Then, he explained the fight with the deviant in glossy, clinical detail, analyzing how they moved instead of detailing the tension and fear Elena knew she would have felt, especially when he casually mentioned that he was set on fire.

Connor hesitated.

“When the android destroyed itself, it interfaced with me,” he said.

Elena shifted. “And what did he show you?”

Connor’s jaw tightened. She watched his expression intently for any confirmation of what she suspected—what they would now be responsible to fix. And, as if he knew he was being studied, Connor betrayed nothing on his face. 

“It was deviant for seven months. It chose to stay because it was scared of not being able to find a home or a job, which is a statistically correct assumption. It hoped that by showing emotions – by empathizing with humans – they would accept him as an equal.”

“Shit,” Elena breathed. “The guy just wanted to belong.”

“It was not a ‘guy’, Miss Anderson. It was an android with a severe software malfunction that would have resulted in a human’s death if not for our intervention,” Connor corrected.

She wouldn’t allow herself to unpack that with Connor. 

He continued, “The more emotion the android displayed, the more the humans tormented it. I suppose you would call it bullying or harassment. The manager yelled at it often, and would then make fun of it for reacting. This occurred for nearly a year before today’s altercation.

“And then…” Connor trailed off, peering over Elena’s shoulder. When she turned, she saw Laura and the SWAT team captain staring each other down, locked in the most tight-lipped, curt argument she’d ever seen.

“What happened, Connor?” Kate pressed.

“I felt it die.” 

His eyes fell to the ground and the loss of focus in his gaze suggested to Elena that he was replaying a memory. “It felt like I died.”

She swallowed.

“I was,” Connor paused.

_Don’t say it. We will be in so much trouble if you say it._

“I was scared.”

. . .

Kate left her car at the automotive shop, feeling too light-headed to drive, and joined Laura and Elena on their drive to CyberLife. She took Elena’s seat up front, furiously texting, while Elena huddled in the back with a mumbling Connor. Laura opted to drive instead of letting the car go on its own. 

“I need to do something with my damn hands,” she said. “Besides, self-driving cars don’t speed.”

“I would advise against exceeding the speed limit, Dr. Hayes,” Connor said.

Ignoring him, Kate turned to look at Elena from the front seat. “What are we looking at?”

Elena had her phone open to a chain of emails from CyberLife executives relating to their project and its purpose, and a series of tabs open on her tablet about android emotions—including her own research. 

“It’s bad,” she concluded. “The deviant-neutralizing android, who is programmed to empathize with deviants to build trust and eventually destroy them, empathized a little too well and is now saying deviant shit that will 100% be blamed on us because we’re the only ones at CyberLife working on emotional development.”

“I am not a deviant.”

“Better not be,” Kate muttered. 

Laura gripped the steering wheel tighter. “And the team?”

“Reached out to Reese and Carson. Reese has been at the office all morning, but Carson can’t come until later because of his patient schedule.”

“‘The team’ is what’s confusing me,” Elena admitted. “We’re supposed to learn how to make androids act more human, so deviancy would be good for research, especially since we’re _supposed_ to be working on Connor’s integration with humans. But, I have this looming feeling that the situation we’re currently in is so far from what CyberLife had in mind that we may or may not have to cover this up. Connor acting this way is _really_ bad.”

 _But,_ she thought, _not unfathomable._

“Okay,” Laura said. Her tone was sharp, and if Elena didn’t know her better, she’d have thought she looked angry. But, ten years of mentorship betrayed her: Laura was scared.

“Here’s the plan: we back up Connor’s program and memories as-is for study before giving him back to his handlers to be reset to his most recent backup as a preventative measure.”

Elena sighed. Resetting him felt so extreme, so unfair, especially when he was just so afraid of even being put into standby mode. Who were they to just wipe away someone’s memories?

She turned to watch Connor’s reaction, but he betrayed nothing. “Resetting me is wise. However, there are still inherent risks to maintaining an unauthorized copy of my program.”

Hearing him say that hurt. Why did that hurt?

“Conveniently, you won’t remember this conversation, and no one on my team would betray the rest of us,” Laura muttered through gritted teeth.

Elena pressed herself deeper into the seat and turned away to look out the window instead. Her tablet and phone both eventually slipped off of her lap and onto the seat between her and Connor with the car’s movements.

Buildings whipped by as the group left Greater Detroit and crossed the bridge to CyberLife tower. Elena took long, deep breaths through her nose before they stopped at security to be swiped into the parking garage, avoiding the gazes of the human guards that checked each of their IDs.

The elevator ride down to their floor was silent apart from Kate fiddling with the bracelets she wore. Elena was hyper-aware of the security camera staring down at them. She closed her eyes and sighed, leaning back against the wall, to collect herself.

Halfway through the day, she felt like she lived a thousand years.

It felt so painfully unfair to have a major breakthrough and a setback in just one day. On top of the pain in Connor’s eyes. On top of taking away his memories. On top of the looming feeling that this day would haunt her.

It all felt so cruel.

The walk to their office felt longer than normal, and the clicks of their heels on the pristine tiled floor echoed more than they usually would. When Laura swiped them all in, they were instantly tackled by Resse’s personal brand of chaos.

“Jesus Christ,” was the first thing he said. His blue-light-filtering glasses sat forgotten on his desk beside an empty cup of coffee and half-eaten Chinese takeout. A TV show was paused on his computer’s monitor, leftover from his lunch break, and there was a notebook full of scribbled code thrown on top of his keyboard.

He crossed the room and circled Connor, staring him up and down, taking in the thirium stains, burnt hair, and yellow-and-red flashing LED. Connor stood perfectly still, simply observing Reese’s actions.

“This thing looks like shit. What’d you do to it?”

Elena and Kate spoke at once:

“Talked him down from a panic attack.”

“Gave him drugs.”

Reese side-eyed them both, then laughed. “Nice.”

“Reese,” Laura cut into the banter. “Can you fix this?”

Halfway to his desk, Reese held up a hand. “Yeah, I can fix it. Just gotta figure out how it broke, first. RK800, can you come here? I need to attach some wires to you.”

While Connor obediently walked over to Reese’s desk, where the programmer was elbow deep in a box full of wires and other hardware, he filled the silence again.

“I am not broken,” he stated. Reese deactivated the skin behind Connor’s undamaged ear and inserted three different-colored wires. “Nor am I a deviant.”

Reese paused to stare at Connor, then looked at Elena. “No, really, what happened to it?”

“A deviant beat him up, set him on fire, and then interfaced with him before, um,” she paused. “Shooting himself. Connor picked up months’ worth of deviant memories, and it doesn’t look like he can handle it.”

Reese sputtered.

“Of _course_ he can’t handle it,” he emphasized while he opened up Connor’s command prompt. “He’s not built for this shit.”

“Isn’t ‘building them for this shit’ literally your job?” Kate snapped. 

Reese rolled his eyes and began typing on a black screen, then a massive wall of code popped up. 

“I’m about to dig into your personal bits,” he said offhandedly in Connor’s direction. “Shouldn’t hurt. Might feel weird.”

“I don’t have the ability to feel, Mr. Everett,” Connor corrected.

With the expertise of someone who had rewritten android code thousands of times, Reese sifted through line after line within Connor’s program while the android stood beside him. He looked uncomfortable, and the wires protruding from the side of his head looked unnatural, especially with the rest of the damage he sustained, but his LED had since shifted to a slowly-blinking yellow.

Itching for something to do, Elena made herself a cup of coffee. And then, she made one for everyone else just to fill time while the team waited for Reese to come up with something, and to give him as much help as she could until there were answers.

She played with the idea of deviancy being a sort of virus before. She wouldn’t be surprised that opening up digital communication between two androids could lead to unwanted data passing through. Viruses and hacking were all relatively common in the same sense that credit card information could be stolen from an online database twenty years ago. 

After a while, Reese leaned back in his chair. “So, Connor is really fancy, but we knew that.”

“Thank you, Mr. Everett.” Connor said. 

“I mean, the code is already isolated. It’s like it created a sort of filing cabinet for the deviant’s memories. They’re there, but they aren’t a part of Connor. He went a little nuts because isolating all those memories took time.”

Elena caught a wildness in Reese’s eyes that spoke for him. “Connor is the only android that can do that, huh? Because you did something?”

“Because I did something!” Reese affirmed, grinning broadly, too excited to hide. “I was messing with the code from 51 while they were building this one to be shipped out. They liked what I did, so it got added last-minute. Connor-52 is the only android in existence with a program that isolates trauma instead of integrating it into its social module.”

“Are you trying to imply that an android with your program wouldn’t deviate from emotional shock?”

Reese made a face. “I made the program to prevent Connor’s social module from picking up bad behaviors, like murder. But yeah, that’s looking like a side-effect.”

“‘Bad behaviors like murder’?” Kate repeated. She wrinkled her nose. “Never mind.”

Elena watched Connor’s face. His expression was calm and his LED was blue, but there was still something different in him that she couldn’t place.

“So is he okay?”

“The program needs a little cleaning. But this unit is fine.” Reese shrugged. He bent to dig around in his hardware drawer again, eventually pulling out a large external hard drive. “I’m going to copy its code to work on so you can bring it back to its docking station and get it fixed. The program took a lot out of its system. So did the drugs, the fire, and the hitting.”

“I didn’t see you there while he was losing his mind,” Kate huffed.

“I wasn’t losing my mind. I experienced a processing trauma. And I recovered thanks to Mr. Everett’s program,” Connor protested.

Elena narrowed her eyes at him, searching for any signal of what everyone in the room knew he meant: _he empathized with a deviant’s emotional shock and then had one of his own_.

Laura stood up first. “Does he need to be reset?”

Reese barely moved. Only a small shrug of his shoulders indicated he heard her while he watched the progress bar on his download of Connor’s code fill in. Then, he mumbled something.

“Reese.”

“You should take it back to its docking station,” he deflected. “It should be charged before I, uh, import the cleaned up program.”

A defensive attitude was sort of normal for Reese, being a self-described “rogue programmer” with a personal history that only Laura knew, but Elena had suspicions involving hacking and other nefarious uses of his talents. He wasn’t gentle, or kind, or by-the-book, or really much of anything positive, and his trust issues easily ballooned into paranoia that made others find trusting him difficult.

Including Elena. But, she trusted her gut, and it was siding with him. He had more to say, and they all knew Connor was a walking security camera.

And Reese was _very_ good at what he did. Elena knew he had a heart in there somewhere if he seemed so willing to go behind CyberLife’s back for the sake of a project about empathy.

“Alright,” Laura agreed. “Your download is done?”

When he nodded, Laura helped unplug the wires from Connor and had him follow her back to his docking station. As soon as the door slid shut behind her, Reese was on his feet, quickly wiping down the whiteboard closest to his desk.

“I intend to do something equal parts good and bad, and you’re both going to be my accomplices,” he announced, already drawing an inelegant flow chart on the board.

With a glance at Kate, Elena decided that, well, what’s left to lose? “Why do you get to be the leader?”

“Because it’s my idea,” he retorted, not missing a beat. “Long story short, we’re not resetting Connor. Not ever. I want it to keep these memories because the program is _growing_ on its own.”

Once he finished drawing on the board, he stepped back and sat on top of his desk, elbows on his knees and hands folded in front of his mouth. 

The chart began with “trauma + trauma safeguard module = isolated memories”, then an arrow from that pointed to “memories not integrated into base code”, with another arrow pointing to “empathy?” and a bunch of arrows around the words “complexity and personality”.

Elena fiddled with a strand of her hair. Androids reacting to “isolated memories” sounded like an equivalent to humans empathizing with the personal experiences of others.

“How does your module work?” 

“It basically writes a wall of code around a memory that the system decides is important enough to save in a sort of… Personal, internal knowledge base. The system can access it for decision-making purposes, but those memories are blocked from the learning module.”

“But having access to it for decision-making would mean that androids learn from those experiences,” Elena pushed. “Wouldn’t it?”

Reese shook his head. “You’re thinking like a human. We can’t block off other people’s experiences from how we view the world. A friend becomes an addict, recovers, and says ‘red ice ruined my life’, that becomes part of someone’s reasoning as to why drugs are bad.”

He paused.

“Rudimentary example, but that should make sense.”

Elena nodded. “Sure, yeah, but seeing a deviant murder someone, for example, would allow another android to conclude that murder is wrong.”

“Well, that’s the intent.”

“That’s learning, Reese.”

He waved a hand at her. “For _humans_ . The difference with androids is that, with that experience and the module installed, the android wouldn’t learn _hey I should kill this human that’s preventing me from carrying out my orders_. Or, it wouldn’t witness a murder and be so horrified by an android doing a horrible thing that it also deviates.”

“So it’s just a different way of processing trauma,” she concluded. “You made them more mentally resilient by guiding what they take away from bad memories.”

He snapped his fingers at her with a grin. 

When he moved back to the whiteboard, Elena got up to join him and grabbed a marker of her own. “It’s almost like maturity. As humans get older, we become a little tougher, so we can handle ‘adult’ emotions without our development freezing.”

She started adding more notes to the board.

“The fascinating thing about Connor’s code, though, is that I just wrote a little program. It flagged and isolated the memory on its own.”

Elena glanced at him. “Isn’t that its purpose?”

“Sure,” Reese shrugged. “But what I’m saying is, I gave it a couple of examples and ‘android self destructing on top of you after sharing all of its trauma via interface while you are also on fire’ wasn’t one of them.”

She turned. “So Connor was able to identify that trauma on his own?”

“And isolate it so it didn’t integrate with the base code, yeah.”

“Oh my god,” Elena said. “You gave Connor the power to prevent his own deviancy.”

Reese mimicked a bow. “Yeah, you’re welcome, I’ll take donations sent to my Venmo account.”

“Didn’t you say there was a bad part?” Kate cut in.

“Oh yeah. It’s not stress tested.”

Elena gaped at him. “How can you say that so casually? You have no idea what it could do to Connor if there’s a bug, or something’s categorized wrong, or—”

“Give it a rest. A lot more than a _bug_ will take down Connor,” Reese snapped. “I know the code. It’s not self-destructing any time soon. There are way too many safeguards, and the worst case scenario is remotely shutting down the body through the Zen Garden.”

She gave him a pleading look, hoping that _just once_ he wouldn’t feel the need to challenge every question someone asked him. “How much can your program endure until Connor deviates?”

“You’re asking like I don’t have the ability to simulate it right now.”

If he was insisting on her calling his bluff, she would. Elena gestured at his computer. “Then simulate it right now.”

Elena hovered behind him, arms folded over her chest as he sat at the terminal. Kate followed, dragging her chair around to sit on Reese’s other side. They watched him select a wall of text and duplicate it, then a pop-up flashed on the top of his screen.

_Software Instability: ^_

Elena pointed at it. “What was that?”

“Me, breaking the code,” Reese clarified. To prove his point, he deleted the code he just added, and the same notification popped up, but with an arrow down.

So, the more trauma an android experiences, the more unstable they become. Even Connor.

He pasted the block of code again a few more times, and another pop-up came and went. 

_Software Instability: ^^^_

Then, he leaned back in his chair and began scrolling through the code slowly, the tip of his tongue sticking out. When he gestured to his glasses, Kate handed them to him and he put them on.

“It _is_ learning,” he said. “Let me show you.”

He highlighted the block of code that he copied. “This is the original memory of what Connor experienced today. Not the deviant’s memories.”

With a few clicks, a window popped up, and Elena read over his shoulder. 

_[09-20-2038 12:11] Instability rating: moderate. Flagged for isolation._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_[09-20-2038 12:13] Isolation complete. Memory blocked from learning module._

Then, Reese scrolled down to the last block of code he pasted and brought up the same window. 

“Here’s a duplicate.”

_[09-20-2038 13:33] Instability rating: low. Flagged for isolation._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_[09-20-2030 13:35] Error: duplicate coping protocol. Flagged for grouping._

_…_

_…_

_…_

_[09-20-2038 13:37] Grouping complete. Memory grouped with MEMORY ID 092020381213. Consensus achieved._

Elena let out a long sigh as she processed how the backup of Connor’s code responded to the artificial memories. He was _adapting_ to trauma instead of simply _breaking_ because of experiences outside his primary functions. His code was becoming _more_ resilient every time he acquired new bad memories.

The perfect deviant hunter.

That left Elena unsettled.

“How did you make something so… _Human?_ ”

Reese pulled his fingers through his hair and let it flop back down, disheveled. “By accident.”

“And deviancy happens when software instability is at 100%?”

Reese made a face. “ _Exceeds_ 100%, technically, but in practice, yeah, you’re probably right. When it hits 100% – which for Connor’s code, would take a _really_ long time because of this module – the android is presented with a sort of firewall. If it chooses to break it down, which it can, and I don’t know why it would choose to, so don’t ask, software instability goes over 100% and you’ve got a deviant.”

Her mind reeled. System stress made deviants. Trauma was the ultimate stress. But, everyone at Eden seemed so content. And, so did Benjamin.

“Is it always trauma?”

“Yes,” Reese said without hesitating, but backtracked when he caught Elena’s questioning stare. “Trauma for an android is anything it isn’t programmed to understand. It’s not like a traumatic experience for a human.”

He shrugged. “Semantics.”

“So,” she began, trailing off as she moved to sit at her own desk, “that could include, as a hypothetical, repeated rejection by society? A constant sense of other-ness and various microaggressions over time?”

Reese drummed his fingers on the desk in thought. “Yeah, sure, if it goes on long enough. What you’re talking about sounds like small potatoes compared to every simulation I’ve done on this so far.”

“How long would it take?” she pressed. 

“For an android to be made deviant by micro-traumas in the news and anti-android sentiment…”

She caught his gaze. 

“Was the android being mistreated at home?”

“No.”

He nodded and began typing in a new window of android code. “Years, probably. It would have to be open to empathizing first if the trauma isn’t a direct experience.”

Elena paused. She was reluctant to outright ask him to simulate Benjamin’s code. His uniqueness was a secret she kept only for herself, carefully guarding the memories of her mother opening up his body to add homemade parts and modifying his code to _be more human_.

“Jason will probably want this.”

“Not yet,” Elena said quickly.

Reese laughed. “I mean, just because he would _want_ it doesn’t mean I’ll _give_ it to him. I don’t want to wait for approval before putting this back into 52, and getting shut down by the bossman is bad for my bank account.”

“Oh my god,” Kate muttered

Elena locked eyes with Reese, raising a brow. “You just want to improve Connor’s ability to handle unpredictability. Makes sense.”

Reese nodded. “Yeah, sure. And if 52 ends up acting a little more human because of it—”

“So you’re _both_ rogue now?” Kate huffed.

Elena picked up what he was putting down. The program already had a life of its own inside Connor. She knew he wanted to see what Connor could do with the upgrade as much as she did, so she carefully chose how she would finish where he trailed off:

“—better for the project.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer that I have absolutely no idea how to code, so I'm making this up as I go, buuuuut I promise it's all meaningful to the big conspiracy I keep hinting at!
> 
> Also, I'm excited to see what you think of all of Elena's coworkers. I have so much fun writing them, so I hope you enjoy them!


End file.
